If Your Party Doesn't Succeed, Suppress and Suppress Again

In January, I posed the question on my Facebook page, whether after Georgia elected Democratic candidates Joe Biden, Jon Ossoff, and Raphael Warnock, would the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature try to reach out to minorities or seek to further suppress their votes? It's abundantly clear now that they have chosen the latter.

On Thursday the Georgia Legislature passed a law that is probably the most restrictive since the Jim Crow Era. Among other things, the law limits drop boxes, strips the secretary of state off the state election board, imposes new oversight for county election boards, restricts who can vote with provisional ballots, and makes it a crime to offer food and water to people waiting in line to vote. Then to top it off, black Georgia Democratic State Representative Park Cannon was arrested for knocking on Governor Brian Kemp's office door, accused of obstruction, and charged with a felony.

Georgia isn't alone in its efforts to restrict voting rights. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as of February 19, 2021, there have been 253 bills from 43 states with provisions that restrict voting access. In other words, it's more likely than not, there are bills being considered to restrict voting access in your state. I live in Texas, which is already one of the most difficult places to vote in the country, but there are currently multiple bills being considered that would make it even more difficult to vote.

These efforts are being framed by their proponents as a way to increase confidence in the election system, after numerous unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud. However, seeing that most of the proposed measures will disproportionately affect minority communities, it seems clear that their efforts are just a blatant attempt to retain power at the expense of minority voters.

The Restrictive Laws Are Aimed at Minority Communities, Especially Black Voters

There's a saying when "white people get a cold, black people get pneumonia." Usually, this is noted in the terms of economics, because when things like unemployment go up for whites it tends to go up twice as fast for blacks. The same can be said for many of these restrictive laws getting passed around the country. While they may inevitably affect some white voters, they will likely affect a disproportionate amount of black ones.

Just look at the provision of Georgia's law that criminalizes offering food and water to those in line to vote. The justification for the provision was to protect voters from "interference or harassment," but in practice it just prevents people from helping voters remain comfortable as they wait in voting long lines, thus making them less likely to leave the line and not vote. Since long voting lines are more common in black communities that live in more densely populated cities like Atlanta, it will likely affect a disproportionate amount of black voters.

If it wasn't already clear that these laws are targeting minority voters, earlier provisions of the Georgia law display even more blatantly targeting of black communities. In particular, a provision that was eventually removed was one that banned Sunday voting. This was seen as a direct attack on black churches, which have a tradition of "souls to the polls," where members go in groups to vote after church services on Sundays.

Add the fact that these laws, which are known to disproportionately affect black and other minority communities, to the context that these same communities are more likely to vote Democratic, then it becomes clear that the goal is the retention of power. Even more, the Republican party has explicitly stated that they use such tactics to gain political advantages. In 2017, Republicans argued before the United States Supreme Court in Gill v. Whitford to defend their gerrymandering practice while redistricting that their efforts weren't based on race, which would be in violation of the United States Constitution, but instead were only intended to gain a partisan advantage. While it is clear that they are seeking partisan advantage, the problem is that race and partisanship overlap so much it's usually near impossible to distinguish the two because one of the most common ways to determine a group's partisan affiliation is by identifying their race.

Efforts on the Federal Level

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Congressional Democrats have been working to expand voting access to voting rights. On March 3, 2021, House Resolution 1 was passed. If passed by the Senate, the law would restrict partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, strike down hurdles to voting, and bring transparency to a murky campaign finance system that allows wealthy donors to anonymously bankroll political causes. These changes would be welcome changes, and as Jesse Jackson discussed in his op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times, help ensure the fundamental right to vote remains above partisanship.

Additionally, efforts should be made to encourage Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Enhancement Act. This Act, which was introduced during the last Congressional Session, would restore and modernize the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted by the 2013 United States Supreme Court Shelby County Decision. The Act would also provide the federal government with other tools to combat assaults on Americans’ right to vote. Conclusion

Now that many Republicans have made it abundantly clear that they're more interested in suppressing the minority vote than earning it, it's time for us to demand Congress take action and protect our rights to vote.