The Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act

On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed the discriminatory literacy tests that had been used to prevent African Americans from voting and suffrage was finally fully extended to African American women.

The Voting Rights Act (VRA) was designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Act secured voting rights for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Act is considered to be the most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country.

That was then, but the Act has been systematically gutted in recent years by a Supreme Court ruling (Shelby County v. Holder  - 2013) and some state legislatures that have worked to put back in place many of the barriers the VRA was designed to break down.

The 2016 election is the first presidential one in 50 years without the Voting Rights Act in full effect.

Given the current 8-member Supreme Court which has been reluctant to take many cases until a 9th Justice is appointed and confirmed, lower courts have again found their mojo and have been combating these state laws designed to limit voting. Section 2 of the VRA has a general provision that prohibits every state and local government from imposing any voting law that results in discrimination against racial or language minorities. But while the literacy tests have gone out, state governments interested in limiting voting have found new ways to disenfranchise potential voters.

Lower courts have been rejecting these laws and reaffirming rights last month, however in places like Wisconsin, Texas, North Carolina, Michigan, and Kansas. In all, voters in 17 states have faced new restrictions that ranged from photo ID requirements to cutbacks on early voting and same-day registration in 2016.

Recently, courts found that Wisconsin’s voter ID law placed an undue burden on voters; struck down Michigan’s ban on straight-party voting, and reversed a Kansas ruling that suspended the registrations of 17,500 voters.

The Fourth Circuit voided all of North Carolina’s challenged provisions — restoring a week of early voting, same-day registration, provisional ballots and pre-registration as well as getting rid of the photo ID requirement; finding that the state legislature had intended to discriminate against Blacks when its Republican majority passed a sweeping rollback of voting provisions and instigated a photo identification requirement in 2013.

In Texas, a federal appeals court ruled against Texas’ voter ID law, knocking down what was considered the most restrictive law of its kind in the country. Texas’ law allowed seven forms of valid state or federal ID, and no exceptions for those who lacked an ID or the underlying documents, such as a birth certificate, to obtain one. According to the federal district court, about 600,000 registered voters did not have an ID that would be acceptable under the new law — and a disproportionate number were black or Latino.

Who can vote matters, as anyone who remembers the 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush. That election was decided 5-4 by the Supreme Court. SCOTUS scholars and watchers shudder to think what would happen in 2016 with the Court operating with only 8 members.

Voting matters, because who can vote helps to determine who makes laws. In 1776, only white, male property owners were permitted to vote. By George Washington’s election in 1789, only 6 percent of the population was permitted to vote.

Voting was the privilege of America’s white, wealthy, and elite men. A look at almost every elected body in this country tells us that legislatures are still too male, too white, and too well-to-do to broadly reflect the populations they “represent.”

By the Civil War, most white men could vote regardless of property ownership, although some state laws required literacy testing, poll taxes, and religious tests that intentionally denied legal immigrants, newly naturalized non-white citizens, and Native Americans the right to vote.

Voting rights have gradually expanded. Constitutional amendments enacted after the Civil War extended the right to vote to various segments of the American population. Additional amendments forbade the denial of a person’s right to vote based on birth, race, color, previous condition of servitude, failure to pay poll or other taxes, or duration of residency in a voting district.

Women’s suffrage was granted by the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919. In 1971, the voting age was lowered to 18 years of age by the Twenty-Sixth Amendment.

And while some states don’t enact restrictions on voters, they also don’t go out of their way to make things easy. New York is a good case in point, as was demonstrated by the presidential primary vote back in April.

Just some of the issues were New York’s closed primary system, an absurdly early change-of-party deadline, the lack of uniform voting hours, problems with polling places, and lack of an automatic voting registration process or same-day registration. Some of New York’s voting problems are now under official investigation by both Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

“New York is really notorious in terms of having difficult obstacles for voters to surmount in order to vote,” said Blair Horner, with the New York Public Interest Research Group. New York is one of the most restrictive in the nation that “contributes to New York having one of the lowest voter participation rates in the country.”

New York needs laws and procedures that encourage, rather than discourage, voting.  The Attorney General has opined that allowing online voter registration is legal and could be done statewide under existing law.

Other states are making changes that empower voters. In Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown signed a first-in-the-nation bill to automatically register all eligible Oregonians to vote when they obtain or renew a driver’s license or state identification card. If they do not opt out, the secretary of state’s office will mail them a ballot automatically 20 days before any election.

Four other states — California, Connecticut, West Virginia, and Vermont — have voted to put this innovative system in place, while 27 other states and the District of Columbia have been considering the idea. Officials in Vermont estimate that their new system could add as many as 50,000 voters in the next four years. California officials estimate that there are 6.6 million eligible voters now unregistered, with many due for license renewals.

Given the gridlock in Congress, there won’t be any good legislation coming out of Washington to ensure voting rights for all, and given the sentiments in state capitals, voting remains a case-by-case issue. Don’t throw away your vote; you might just lose it.