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How Voter Suppression Actually Works
Dave Weigel Retweeted:"Today, voter suppression is a labyrinth, not a wall." Gotta read this, from @fivefifths.
Link to tweet
POLITICS
The Georgia Governor’s Race Has Brought Voter Suppression Into Full View
America is undergoing the kind of slow erosion of democracy that the Voting Rights Act was intended to fight.
VANN R. NEWKIRK II
1:48 PM ET
The Georgia governor’s race is balanced on a knife’s edge. Local polls have the Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams and her GOP opponent, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, virtually tied. Abrams’s team in particular will scramble to make sure every provisional ballot is completed, that every person who faced challenges to registration is able to participate, that all absentee and vote-by-mail ballots are counted, and that every allegation of intimidation or unfair practices on Election Day is investigated. In a race in which a December runoff is a distinct possibility if neither candidate can secure 50 percent support, every single vote matters.
But no matter the outcome, it’s clear that voter rights and suppression will be one of the major stories of the 2018 election in Georgia. The state has become the battleground for something deeper than the ideas of the candidates themselves; it’s now emblematic of a larger struggle over voting rights that has changed party politics markedly over the past five years. The true nature of voter suppression as an accumulation of everyday annoyances, legal barriers, and confusion has come into full view. Today, voter suppression is a labyrinth, not a wall.
{Read: The ghosts of the 1960s haunt the Georgia governor’s race}
That labyrinth has been under construction for years. Kemp has embarked on what his opponents and critics say is a series of naked attempts to constrict the electorate. Since 2010, his office reports that it has purged upwards of 1.4 million voters from the rolls, including more than 660,000 Georgians in 2017 and almost 90,000 this year. Many of those voters found their registration canceled because they had not voted in the previous election. Additionally, under an “exact match” law passed by the state legislature that requires handwritten voter registrations to be identical to personal documents, 53,000 people had their registrations moved to “pending” status because of typos or other errors before a district court enjoined the policy. More than 80 percent of those registrations belonged to black voters.
....
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
The Georgia Governor’s Race Has Brought Voter Suppression Into Full View
America is undergoing the kind of slow erosion of democracy that the Voting Rights Act was intended to fight.
VANN R. NEWKIRK II
1:48 PM ET
The Georgia governor’s race is balanced on a knife’s edge. Local polls have the Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams and her GOP opponent, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, virtually tied. Abrams’s team in particular will scramble to make sure every provisional ballot is completed, that every person who faced challenges to registration is able to participate, that all absentee and vote-by-mail ballots are counted, and that every allegation of intimidation or unfair practices on Election Day is investigated. In a race in which a December runoff is a distinct possibility if neither candidate can secure 50 percent support, every single vote matters.
But no matter the outcome, it’s clear that voter rights and suppression will be one of the major stories of the 2018 election in Georgia. The state has become the battleground for something deeper than the ideas of the candidates themselves; it’s now emblematic of a larger struggle over voting rights that has changed party politics markedly over the past five years. The true nature of voter suppression as an accumulation of everyday annoyances, legal barriers, and confusion has come into full view. Today, voter suppression is a labyrinth, not a wall.
{Read: The ghosts of the 1960s haunt the Georgia governor’s race}
That labyrinth has been under construction for years. Kemp has embarked on what his opponents and critics say is a series of naked attempts to constrict the electorate. Since 2010, his office reports that it has purged upwards of 1.4 million voters from the rolls, including more than 660,000 Georgians in 2017 and almost 90,000 this year. Many of those voters found their registration canceled because they had not voted in the previous election. Additionally, under an “exact match” law passed by the state legislature that requires handwritten voter registrations to be identical to personal documents, 53,000 people had their registrations moved to “pending” status because of typos or other errors before a district court enjoined the policy. More than 80 percent of those registrations belonged to black voters.
....
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
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