Although there are the necessary get-out-the-black-vote campaigns across the country, voting by African Americans will undoubtedly be hampered in the upcoming election. There are several reasons for this possibility. I address two below.
First is this new era in voting rights. This is the first presidential election year without the protection of the Voting Rights Act. Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Act by overturning the key provision in the 1965 law that required lawmakers in states with a history of discriminating against minority voters to get federal permission before changing voting rules. Immediately after the Court decision came down in 2014, Republican lawmakers across the United States went wild with new voting restrictions:
Within two hours of the Voting Rights decision, Texas reinstated a voter id law that had been blocked by a federal court, and Alabama also reinstated its voter ID law.
Within a month Republicans in North Carolina passed a package of extreme voting restrictions, including ending same-day registration, shortening early voting by a week, and requiring a photo ID.
- Virginia purged more than 38,000 names from the voter rolls.
- Mississippi announced that it would start implementing its voter ID law.
- South Carolina implemented a stricter photo identification requirement.
- New birth certificate requirements appeared in Arizona and Kansas.
- Kansas, Ohio, and Wisconsin, three states not covered by the original Voting Rights Act, legislated voting restrictions.
These restrictions on voting eligibility will cause problems for some potential voters. Several federal court rulings have struck down voter ID laws in Kansas, North Carolina, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Texas. It appears that in some places in some of these states officials plan to continue asking for IDs.
The second reason for suggesting voter suppression are Donald Trump’s fact-free claims that the election “is rigged.” Consequently, he wants his supporters to act as poll-watchers to guard against voter fraud in “certain areas.” By this, a New York Times editorial says he means minority communities in big cities like Philadelphia and Chicago. In 2009, a federal court in New Jersey said that voter intimidation like Trump is encouraging “presents an ongoing threat to the participation of minority individuals in the political process” and poses a far greater threat than the type of voter fraud they are claiming to fight.
To make matters worse, in a throwback to the era of racial apartheid in the South, some of these so-called poll watchers will have guns. In open-carry Virginia, election officials are bracing for armed Donald Trump poll watchers. In Georgia, polling precincts will set up at local law enforcement stations which will have armed police present. Also, gun-carrying white “patriot” groups such as the Oath Keepers have announced they will be present to prevent “voter fraud.”
Trump, The Republican National Committee, and their allies contend that they are merely trying to limit voter fraud. However, their claims of voter fraud are themselves fraudulent. In-person voter fraud almost never happens. A recent study of voting over the last 15 years found only 30 cases of voter fraud in over 80 million votes. Nevertheless, Trump’s supporters have been convinced that there is voter fraud and they seem willing to act upon that belief, which may very well suppress the African American vote.