VOTE!!: DESPITE VOTING STRUCTURES AND RESTRICTIONS DURING COVID-19
By Dee Crescitelli, Juan Gerardo, Kyndall Brown, Silvia Llamas-Flores, & Carlos LópezLeiva
Introduction
The coronavirus pandemic stands to bring a major surge of mail-in and absentee voting in the upcoming general election. Now more than ever, a system that is designed to keep voters safe is critical and fundamental to our democracy. Unfortunately, recent events have raised questions about voting rights, particularly for people of color. The coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated voter suppression and highlighted the systemic racism and inequities that have historically affected people of color. In this blog, we address some of the many factors that disproportionately disenfranchise different groups. Understanding voting as a fundamental democratic right, we present this information to promote critical conversations on the structures constraining this right, but at the same time, we also encourage our audience to VOTE! With this in mind, in this blog, we start by briefly contextualizing voting laws in the U.S. to provide context to the rest of the blog. We then highlight some of the differences in voting laws across different states and the ramifications these laws have on different groups. We then move on to discuss the role that COVID-19 has played in exacerbating voter suppression and how mail-in-voting has become a voting right issue. To end, we provide examples of several lessons that can be used in the classroom to discuss issues centered around voting and COVID-19.
1. Disenfranchising Voting in US Context
According to the Oxford dictionary, disenfranchisement is the state of being deprived of a right or privilege, especially the right to vote. Throughout the history of the U.S., there are many groups of people who have been disenfranchised. Originally, the only people who were allowed to vote were white male property owners. The 15th amendment to the constitution gave formerly enslaved African-American men the right to vote. The 20th amendment gave women the right to vote. Even after the passage of the 15th and 20th amendments, many states enacted policies that restricted the voting rights of African-Americans. A large focus of the Civil Rights movement was securing the right to vote. The 1965 Voting Rights Act provided nationwide protections for voting rights. The law prohibits every state and local government from imposing any voting law that results in discrimination against racial or language minorities. Other general provisions specifically outlaw literacy tests and similar devices that were historically used to disenfranchise racial minorities. In recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court has begun to reverse many of the gains of the Voting Rights Act.
Links to Articles About Disenfranchisement
Supreme Court Invalidates Key Part of Voting Rights Act
New York Times coverage of the Supreme Court invalidating key portions of the Voting Rights Act
Article from 8/25/20 detailing the impact that Shelby v. Holder is having - mainly about laws that give outsized (and often unwanted power) to non-election officials in determining who gets to vote. For example, in states that have enacted very specific voter-ID laws, the Department of Motor Vehicle personnel get to determine who can get an ID, and therefore who gets to vote. Staffing patterns at DMVs and differing hours of operation due to COVID-19 precautions further exacerbate this issue-- creating barriers for historically disenfranchised groups.
Democrats Need to Step Up Their Efforts to Beat Voter Suppression