In the fall of 1918, as midterm 

elections approached during the 
end of World War I and the second 
wave of the Spanish flu emerged in 
September, voters witnessed “the 
first masked ballot ever known in 
the history of America.” Today, 
as history so often likes to repeat 
itself, Americans are enduring sim-
ilar situations. In the midst of the 
resurgence of the Black Lives Mat-
ter movement, paired with a deadly 
pandemic that has taken the lives of 
over 143,000 individuals in the U.S. 
and a presidential election on the 
horizon, the country is scrambling 
for ways to uphold the constructs 
of constitutional democracy while 
fighting for the lives of their neigh-
bors, brothers and sisters. 

Some states, such as Michigan, 

have recently adopted new voting 
laws where anyone can now choose 
to vote via absentee ballot without 
requiring a reason. On March 10, 
2020, Michigan Secretary of State 
Jocelyn Benson said that “all of 
Michigan’s 7.7 million registered 
voters will be mailed absentee bal-
lot applications so they can take 
part in elections in August and 
November without the risk of in-
person voting if they choose to do 
so.” Benson’s office also “report-
ed a surge in new voter registra-
tion after seeing numbers drop off 
sharply during the height of the 
coronavirus outbreak in Michigan.” 
As people across the nation fear for 
their health, many are choosing 
socially-distanced voting options, if 
at all possible. Unfortunately, mail-
in voting is not a feasible option in 
many states, and Americans have 
witnessed 
countless 
individuals 

jeopardize their health in order to 
fulfill their democratic duties. 

On June 9, Georgia held its pri-

mary election with 214 fewer poll-
ing places than it had in 2013, largely 
due to the Supreme Court’s gut-
ting of significant parts of the Vot-
ing Rights Act, which allowed nine 
states to modify their election laws 
without seeking approval from the 
federal government. The state also 
introduced over $100 million worth 
of new electronic voting machines. 
Through a combination of machine 
malfunction, poor planning and a 
lack of poll workers, these machines 
did not work, leading many voters 
to wait in line for hours. In addi-
tion, not enough absentee ballots 
were distributed, leading to many 
registered voters finding them-
selves unable to vote despite having 
requested a mail-in ballot on time.

Georgia’s 
disastrous 
primary 

resulted in a textbook case of voter 
suppression, a complex, undemo-
cratic political strategy to create 
barriers or ultimately prevent eli-
gible voters from exercising their 
right to vote. Required photo ID 
and most anti-voter fraud legisla-
tion are forms of voter suppression. 

This tactic often targets people of 
color and low-income individuals. 
Many of Georgia’s polling station 
closures, as well as most of their 
machine errors on June 9, were in 
counties with large Black popula-
tions. Majority-white areas had 
notably fewer problems voting. 

Some argue that modern voter 

suppression is not an intentional 
or malicious act. Ill will is difficult 
to prove. However, voting secu-
rity measures and poorly-managed 
elections today continue to impact 
those who have already been dis-
proportionately affected by system-
ic oppression, further obstructing 
their ability to exercise fundamen-
tal democratic rights and freedoms. 
These consequences should not be 
excusable. As Lewis himself put 
it in July 2011, “Voting rights are 
under attack in America ... There’s 
a deliberate and systematic attempt 
to prevent millions of elderly voters, 
young voters, students, minority 
and low-income voters from exer-
cising their constitutional right to 
engage in the democratic process.”

As 
the 
Michigan 
primaries 

approach, the University can also 
do more to make sure students have 
the necessary resources to exercise 
their right to vote. There is a voter 
registration button on Wolverine 
Access, for example, but it is at the 
bottom of the page and only exists 
as a button on the old version of the 
site — one has to search for “voter 
registration” directly to find this 
information on the new interface. 
In a December 2019 interview from 
The Daily with University Presi-
dent Mark Schlissel, when asked 
if he would consider automati-
cally registering students to vote, 
he responded, “I’d want to think 
about it more. My goal alternative-
ly is to make it as easy as possible 
for people to register and that as 
easy as possible for people to vote, 
but you still have to take personal 
responsibility.” Organizations such 
as the Ginsberg Center can pro-
mote civic engagement on campus, 
but that information is clearly not 
being disseminated well if students 
were still having trouble voting as 
recently as the March presidential 
primary. Barriers to students voting 
are likely to worsen as the COVID-
19 pandemic continues. Rep. Karen 
Bass, D-Calif., said, “I know that if 
he was still with us, he would be 
leading that fight. What we have to 
do is live up to his legacy. We need 
to continue that fight for social jus-
tice. And again, the first thing we 
need to do is pass the Voting Rights 
Act and get it signed.” Lewis — 
along with countless other selfless, 
empowering leaders today — have 
left roadmaps for us to follow in the 
fight for social justice and freedom. 

The state of Michigan’s primary 

is on Aug. 4. You have until 5 p.m. on 
July 31 to request an absentee ballot.

E

ventually, public pressure 
evoked by media circula-
tion of police brutality in 

America led to the enactment of 
the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a 
step that empowered Black vot-
ers and ultimately led to Lewis’s 
informal title — “conscience of the 
U.S. Congress.” In a 1971 House 
testimony, Lewis stated, “We 
have to look beyond the glowing 
reports of a new South. We have 
to recognize the fallacies of those 
who would tell us that Federal 
registrars and observers are no 
longer needed. We cannot allow 
ourselves to be duped into believ-
ing that, in these so-called new 
and changing times, the Voting 
Rights Act is no longer needed.” 
Fervently, Lewis continued with, 
“There are fewer violent tactics, 
but the subtle and more sophis-
ticated forms of intimidation are 
still being devised and are quite 
prevalent.” Today, nearly half a 
century later, Americans are still 
fighting for the same freedoms.

In light of recent voter sup-

pression cases worsened by the 
consequences of the COVID-19 
pandemic, and in the spirit of 
Lewis and Vivian’s lifelong work, 
we as college students and as 
a broader community of young 
people need to prioritize and 

take advantage of our right to 
vote, especially at this moment. 
The University of Michigan has 
resources for educating students 
about where and how to vote, but 
these resources need to be more 
widely 
advertised 
and 
acces-

sible. In June 2019, Lewis stated, 
“I have said this before, and I 
will say it again. The vote is pre-
cious. It is almost sacred. It is 
the most powerful non-violent 
tool we have in a democracy.” 

Unfortunately, the ability to 

vote historically has been and 
continues to be difficult for many 
across the United States. In 1980, 
Paul Weyrich, an influential con-
servative, stated, “I don’t want 
everybody to vote ... As a matter 
of fact, our leverage in the elec-
tions quite candidly goes up as 
the voting populace goes down.” 
Most unfortunately, and thanks 
in part to a conservative advo-
cacy group founded by Weyrich, 
the GOP’s efforts to disenfran-
chise voters have been more wide-
spread and effective since the 
2010 elections. The American 
Legislative 
Exchange 
Coun-

cil — funded in part by the bil-
lionaire Koch brothers who also 
bankrolled the Tea Party — has 
been a key part in the systematic 
campaign to impede voters in 

nearly every step of the electoral 
process, and has done so success-
fully with 38 states introducing 
legislation designed to do just that. 

One of the most notable and 

recent changes to overload the 
system came in the form of requir-
ing a government-issued photo 
ID. This mandate disenfranchises 
hundreds of thousands of voters, 
the methodology of which being 
dependent on specific state leg-
islation. For example, up until 
June 2017, Texas accepted con-
cealed-weapon permits at polls, 
but not student IDs. Similarly, in 
Wisconsin, a state with roughly 
340,000 college students, student 
IDs are not sufficient for voting, 
requiring students to make mul-
tiple additional steps in order to 
cast their ballot. After Wisconsin 
implemented its new voter ID law 
in 2011, which required students 
to provide multiple forms of iden-
tification, it became one of the 
strictest states for voting and it 
was estimated that some 242,000 
students may have lacked the 
documentation required to vote 
— something that was unheard of 
even two years previously. Analiese 
Eicher, a Dane County, Wis., board 
supervisor, commented, “It’s like 
creating a second class of citi-
zens in terms of who gets to vote.” 

4

Thursday, July 23, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION

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Editor in Chief

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FROM THE DAILY

John Lewis’ legacy and voter suppression in America
O

n July 17, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Rev. C.T. Vivian, both 
giants in the fight for fairness and freedom, passed away. Lewis, a 
breathtakingly powerful figure of the Civil Rights Movement, spent his 

entire life fighting for humanity and civil rights, making voting rights a key part of 
his activism. He risked his life countless times in an effort to enfranchise voters.

