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
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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.