Dahlia Lithwick: The Most Important Question Facing Americans Today

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The Most Important Question Facing Americans Today
Who counts?
By Dahlia Lithwick
Sept 15, 201911:00 AM


Far too often, voting rights are a dormant topic up until the week before a general election, when we suddenly start to worry about shuttered polling places, long lines, and glitchy voting machines. But the unglamorous issue of voting is more important than any one candidate or any one issue. Because no matter who our next president is, and what they do or don’t plan to accomplish, if your vote doesn’t count, nothing else really does, either.

Public confidence in the power of “one person, one vote” is at an all-time low. Unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud have helped undermine core trust in the very cornerstones of constitutional democracy: the proposition that every vote matters. The long-term project of voter suppression has been undertaken not simply to ensure that certain communities are devalued and bricked out of the democratic process, but also to foment the belief that the entire system is pointless and corrupt. At some level, the nihilism is the point: In an NPR–Marist University poll conducted just before the 2018 midterms, 47 percent of the respondents indicated that they lacked faith that all votes cast would be counted fairly. Nearly 5 in 10 nonwhite voters reported that they believed it unlikely that all votes would be counted. Forty percent of voters felt that U.S. elections are no longer fair. The lack of confidence is hardly misplaced, as the gap between the popular vote and the Electoral College widens and as the results of close elections are repeatedly thrown into doubt.

But if you still believe that democracy matters—as I want to—then we must be focused on the right to vote, right now, and on into the indefinite future. To be sure, voting alone can’t fix what ails this country, but we can’t fix anything without a meaningful, immutable, and equal right to vote. And defending the future of free and fair elections requires not just pointing out the jurisdictions that are getting it wrong—by suppressing student voting or implementing illegal voter purges—but also shining a light on jurisdictions that are getting it right, with mail-in ballots or independent redistricting committees. It requires not just being outraged by the fact that the Senate has shown no interest in investigating foreign election interference, but also examining what the consequences might be in elections to come. Whether or not you are counted in 2020 will affect whether or not you actually count thereafter.

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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/the-most-important-question-who-counts.html