With midterm elections on the horizon, voters across America soon will weigh their choices. They should also be thinking hard about another critical aspect to this election season — the broad, systematic campaign underway to suppress access to the vote, a movement particularly directed at Americans of color.
The scale of that campaign, led principally by Republican-controlled state legislatures, is both disquieting and dangerous. Last year, 19 states passed laws restricting access to voting through an array of measures, from barriers to voting by mail to cumbersome voter ID requirements and restrictions on what steps election officials can take to help foster voter access. This year, even more states have bills on the table that in essence enable voter suppression.
The driving force behind these laws, of course, is the groundless belief perpetuated by former President Donald Trump and his followers that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. A raft of court decisions found GOP claims of election fraud to be baseless, but that hasn’t stopped Republican-controlled statehouses from skewing election laws in the GOP’s favor under the guise of election security.
Though the growing tide of voter suppression measures is worrisome, there recently was reason for hope — in the form of federal Judge Mark Walker’s decision to rule much of Florida’s year-old election law unconstitutional and racially motivated.
In May 2021, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis signed off on a series of changes to the state’s election laws, including limitations on the use of drop boxes, as well as measures that made it more difficult to obtain a mail-in ballot, shortened early voting and placed harsh constraints on voter registration groups.
Those measures, Walker said in his ruling, were aimed directly at Black voters — a segment of the electorate that tends to vote for Democrats. He called the changes pushed by Republican lawmakers “part of a cynical effort to suppress turnout among their opponents’ supporters. That, the law does not permit.”
Crucially, Walker’s ruling puts Florida’s handling of election law under federal oversight, relying on a rarely used element of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that allows the federal government to sign off on a state or local government’s voting law changes if that entity has a history of racial discrimination.
Walker’s decision is likely to be appealed, and it’s not expected to hold up at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a conservative panel, or if it gets to the Supreme Court with its 6-3 conservative majority. Nevertheless, it’s an important first salvo against the wave of laws being passed that restrict voting rather than encouraging participation in our democracy.
One silver lining to the pandemic was that it necessitated steps such as mail-in voting and drop boxes that made it easier to vote. That led to record turnout, which is much more reflective of a healthy democracy than voter apathy, election cycle after election cycle. None of those facilitating measures engendered any proven voter fraud, despite Trump’s wildly baseless claims.
Laws that restrict voting represent a step backward. They empower one party not just at the expense of the opposing party, but at the expense of the voter. Walker’s ruling may not survive the appeals process, but it should serve as a wake-up call to Americans that it’s going to take an all-hands-on-deck approach to preserving the integrity of America’s voting system.
Judges will need to follow Walker’s lead and scrutinize restrictive voting laws that get legally challenged. Republican lawmakers in states where such measures are still pending should think about protecting democracy first, before falling in with the Trumpian line of thinking. But perhaps the best counterattack may lie with voters themselves. The midterms also include statehouse races, and voters have the power to kick out lawmakers who put self-interest above preserving the right to vote.
“Use the power of the vote to actually elect people who would be more representative of your interests,” said Gilda Daniels, a law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, speaking recently at an online forum on voter suppression. Daniels is the author of Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America. “I’m praying and trusting and believing that we are paying attention — that we are not sleeping at a dangerous time. Because this is a dangerous time. We can go forward or we can go backward.”
America squandered an important opportunity to move forward when Washington failed to enact the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that would have prevented state and local governments from implementing discriminatory voting rules and practices. The failure to protect access to the vote reflects a complacency in the U.S. to safeguard democratic ideals that too many Americans take for granted.
Speaking at a forum in Chicago last week, former President Barack Obama was asked about Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In answering, he talked of “democracies that have gotten flabby, and confused and feckless around the stakes of things that we tended to take for granted: rule of law, freedom of the press and conscience … independent judiciaries, making elections work in ways that are fair and free.”
“We have gotten complacent,” Obama continued. “And I cannot guarantee that as a consequence of what has happened, that we are shaking off that complacency.” While Obama was responding to a question about events in Ukraine, his answer resonates as a warning about the internal perils that America faces.
We cannot afford to get complacent about our own democracy. And Daniels is right. We have the tools to protect our democratic ideals. We just need the resolve to use them.
