With disenfranchisement on the rise, it’s more important than ever to vote
by Eric Kopp ’22, Staff Writer
If you’re like me, you must think that every day since Nov. 8, 2016, has been a reoccurring nightmare. That day is still crystal clear. I remember staying up until three in the morning, completely shocked at who our country just elected as the leader of the free world.
The Trump administration has been so much worse than I ever thought it would be. I’m not only referring to the scandals connected to the president himself, but also the policies that his advisors have pushed him to implement. The negative consequences of his policies will fall on our generation and force us to find solutions to problems because previous generations did not have the courage to take them head on.
From attacking LGBTQ rights, attempting to kill off DACA, demonizing immigrants, and trying to leave millions without healthcare by gutting the Affordable Care Act, Trump has proved time and time again that he lacks the foresight and ability to govern efficiently and for the whole of the country.
In the 2016 election, only about 56 percent of eligible voters cast their ballot in one of the most consequential elections in American history, decided by only a handful of states. Our ancestors fought for centuries to gain the right to vote and now so many Americans take it for granted.
There are still people in this country that are looking to prevent others from exercising their constitutional right. Politicians are looking to increase their party’s control over all levels of government by limiting the ability of certain segments of the population from voting.
American voting history is defined by limiting the right of people to vote. At the founding of our country, only people who owned land could vote. This not only excluded African-Americans and women, but also poor, white men.
There were some states that actually granted the right to vote to all land-owning citizens, like in New Jersey with its Constitution of 1776. In between 1776 and 1807, it was common for women and African-Americans to vote if they met voting requirements.
In 1807, the New Jersey Legislature restricted voting to taxpaying white, male citizens. Why did the state take away that right from a segment of the population who already fully enjoyed that right? As the 1808 presidential election was approaching, the Democratic-Republican Party looked to cement their victory by preventing women and African-Americans, who typically supported the Federalist Party, from voting.
The case in New Jersey and other states set the precedent for political parties to prevent segments of the population from voting, whether it was explicitly or implicitly, while encouraging others to vote. During the Jacksonian Period, states slowly got rid of property requirements and expanded suffrage to all white males.
This was the first period of suffrage expansion in the United States, but such periods were often followed by an expansion of repression. While white men gained more rights, women and African-Americans subsequently lost them.
With the passing of the 15th Amendment, African-Americans and other minorities gained the right to vote. During the Reconstruction Period from 1863–1877, African-Americans in the Southern states commonly exercised their right to vote, usually for the Republican Party.
After the U.S. Army pulled out of the South in 1877, the new state governments controlled by the Democratic Party instituted various measures to make it harder for African-Americans to vote.
Because the 15th Amendment gave African-Americans the right to vote, the new Southern state governments instituted poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses that targeted African-Americans with almost surgical precision. Along with these measures, African-Americans constantly faced threats of violence from their white employers and other white supremacist groups. The combination of violence and institutional barriers worked and according to the Constitutional Rights Foundation, in Mississippi alone, the 90 percent of black men registered to vote during Reconstruction fell to 6 percent by 1892.
To address the discriminatory laws put in place, most often in Southern states, Congress ratified the 24th Amendment, which outlawed poll taxes. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law which prevented discrimination against racial minorities with regards to voting. The Act was successful and virtually ended the use of poll taxes and literacy tests throughout the country.
Other groups to achieve suffrage were women and young adults. Women finally achieved suffrage in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Sometimes it easy to forget that women in this country have only been allowed to vote for less than 100 years. The last major suffrage legislation was the 26th Amendment in 1971, which granted every U.S. citizen above the age of 18 the right to vote.
The era of Jim Crow and explicit legal barriers are over, but the modern-day Republican Party is finding ways to disenfranchise parts of the population where it doesn’t traditionally find support.
One of the most common ways Republicans target minority voters, who tend to vote for the Democratic Party, is by instituting strong photo ID laws that require voters to show some type of ID when going to vote. The problem with these laws is that minority voters are much less likely to have motor vehicle licenses or other forms of ID.
The Republican rebuttal to those criticisms is that they are trying to prevent voter fraud and make elections more secure. According to the Brennan Center, between the period 2000 and 2014, there have been 31 cases of credible voter fraud. 31 cases, out of almost the 1 billion ballots that were cast.
Georgia is facing an extremely competitive gubernatorial election between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp. The Secretary of State is Georgia’s chief election officer, effectively allowing Kemp to oversee his own election.
Recently, Kemp has put about 50,000 voter registration forms on hold because they didn’t line up with the state’s “exact-match” law. According to ABC News, in “this law even a missed hyphen or a nickname inconsistency can stall an application.” About 80 percent of these registrations are from minority voters, while only 9.8 percent come from white voters.
In one of the closest gubernatorial elections this cycle, Abrams, who would become the first female African-American governor in the history of our country if she won, has built her campaign on trying to energize African-American, Latino, and Asian voters to get to the polls. Again, it seems like American history is repeating itself by disenfranchising thousands of minorities so that a single political party can win one governorship.
Throughout our history, our ancestors have fought to gain the right to vote, and in other cases they might have tried to disenfranchise millions of people. No one should suffer for the crimes of their parents, but should be aware of their mistakes and fight to do what’s right.
We all have been given a most sacred right. We owe it not only to ourselves, but also our ancestors and children to exercise it regularly. Generation-Z will soon be one of the largest voting blocks in the country and the only way to make sure our priorities are legislated is to get out there to the polls in every single election.
Whether you use your vote to support a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or any other candidate, be aware of the awesome power that has been awarded to you and fight for the right for others to exercise that same power. Never be surprised at the impact one person can have when they decide to speak up and vote.
