A staggering 233 election cases are pending in federal courts facing off over voting rights during an election in a pandemic. Voter suppression rulings are already underway. Recently, a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Texas’ process for tossing absentee ballots over mismatched signatures, determining that the right to vote by mail is not guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. This comes after governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, limited large counties to a single ballot drop box. While in Alabama, the Supreme Court blocked curbside voting (5-3) in a state with no mandatory face covering law during the pandemic. With these shocking voter suppression tactics taking place, it should be no surprise that we’re seeing 12-hour lines around the country. Voter suppression efforts are not new, since the Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, Republican legislators have passed many voter suppression laws which have resulted in the purging of voter rolls, limits to early voting, felony disenfranchisement, and gerrymandering. All on top of the Trump administrations’ deliberate efforts to damage election infrastructure by sabotaging the post office from within. With a Senate majority, Democrats will hopefully be able to fully restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
On October 19, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals egregiously determined that voters don’t have a Constitutional right to vote by mail. This Texas ruling blocks district judge Orlando Garcia’s prior ruling requiring officials to notify voters whose ballots were rejected due to a signature mismatch. Over 5,000 ballots were legally rejected back in 2016 and 2018 combined for this rule and advocates worry this may suppress the vote. Despite these measures over 4 million Texans have already cast their votes, leading the country in early voting numbers.
“Besides describing the right to vote as fundamental, the plaintiffs have not explained what there is about the right to vote that makes it a liberty interest. The right to vote does not immediately resemble the rights described in Roth, 408 U.S. at 572. The plaintiffs cite no circuit or Supreme Court precedent extending the label of “liberty interest” to the right to vote. The Sixth Circuit, the only circuit to squarely address this issue,22 held that the right to vote does not constitute a liberty interest.”
The 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War in 1868 to grant emancipated slaves full citizenship, states, “No state shall … deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person … the equal protection of the laws.”
The Fifth Court’s ruling is a distortion of that 14th Amendment made to protect vested power. It distorts it just as San Mateo County v. Southern Pacific Rail Road established corporate personhood when Senator Roscoe Conkling claimed the 14th Amendment was not limited to natural persons.
In the 5-3 Supreme Court vote that banned Alabama curbside voting, Justice Sotomayor dissented, quoting a Black plaintiff in his 70s with Parkinson’s disease and asthma who said while he was willing to die to vote as his ancestors had, “We’re past that time.”
A district judge also blocked Texas governor Greg Abbot’s efforts to remove ballot drop off locations in densely populated counties to the effect where a county with 4.7M people would have the same number of locations as one with 169. These efforts to limit voter access point to an insecurity of formerly solid red state Texas being able to win fairly. He planned to limit huge counties to one ballot drop box.
Voter Suppression Efforts
Voter suppression isn’t just limited to court battles, it can come by way of voter intimidation as the GOP has by by recruiting 50,000 “poll watchers” who will be deployed to majority Democratic voter polling stations. Voter intimidation tactics were banned in a 1982 consent decree after Republicans sent police to minority neighborhoods to intimidate voters. However, in 2018 the decree expired and now Republicans are mobilizing 50,000 “poll watchers” to suppress the vote.
Voter suppression no longer pretends to be an effort to protect against voter fraud but its flagrant racist, undemocratic tactics are a campaign to control election outcomes by limiting who votes the most. Republican legislative efforts to suppress the vote have occurred in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Florida, Illinois, Georgia, Texas, Michigan, Iowa, and more states.
The tactics include purging voter rolls like in Georgia and Ohio through ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ laws backed by Trump’s Justice Department. Through this law, over 850,000 eligible Georgia voters were removed off the rolls in 2015.
Limiting early voting is another method used to suppress the vote. In Texas, a court recently rejected a GOP effort to limit early voting.
Gerrymandering is a classic voter suppression effort that undermines our democracy by redrawing electoral districts to favor one party. After 2010, the GOP redrew districts to favor GOP candidates in project REDMAP resulting in the GOP earning more seats despite getting less votes.
Moreover, Trump’s Postmaster General’s sabotaging of the post office is another method destroying our electoral infrastructure. He removed sorting machines and post office boxes, cut overtime work, fired postal veterans, and caused delays.
Restoring the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, 1,688 polling places have closed. With 233 election cases related to COVID-19 pending, outcomes on the future of our democracy are uncertain. It’s crucial that our country votes in senators that will restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to preserve the foundation of our democracy that voting is.
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