[rad-green] Land of the free? Voter surpression in the US

*https://www.studentnewspaper.org/land-of-the-free-voter-surpression-in-the-us/
<https://www.studentnewspaper.org/land-of-the-free-voter-surpression-in-the-us/>*


*The Student | Newspaper          November 21, 2019*


*Land of the free? Voter suppression in the US*

COMMENT <https://www.studentnewspaper.org/category/comment/>Land of the
free? Voter surpression in the US

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      BY *MOLLY MCCRACKEN
      <https://www.studentnewspaper.org/author/mollymccracken/>*

With next year’s presidential election drawing ever closer, and impeachment
proceedings going forward against current leader Donald Trump, American
citizens are facing existential questions about the nature of their
democracy. The United States was founded on the promise of revolution – a
war was fought and won on the rejection of the Old World’s hierarchical
societies, and the glass ceilings that inhibited the freedom and
progression of the non-ruling classes. America’s demonstrative patriotism
is, in fact, often startling to outsiders. The pledge of allegiance,
national anthem, and ubiquity of the flag build up a sense of American
exceptionalism at the heart of public culture, fundamentally woven into
daily life, and rooted in the belief that the nation offers a unique
promise unmatched in other countries. Yet, the very ideals of democratic
inclusion on which the United States celebrates itself is increasingly at
risk. Despite the promise that all men are created equal – affirmed in the
Declaration of Independence as the nation wrote itself into being –
political manoeuvrings over the past few years reflect the sustained
challenges of transforming that equality from an aspiration into a reality.

Reports and studies have suggested that there are significant voter
suppression tactics occurring as we speak, with a noteworthy spike in
efforts rising since Trump’s election in 2016. Such strategies are largely
designed to shape electoral maps in favour of incumbent public officials
and candidates running for the Republican Party. Some might argue that this
is simply how politics works: those in power will do what they can to
maintain it, and strategies such as gerrymandering are coeval with
democracy itself. A closer examination of these techniques, and the
populations they target, however, reveals the underlying biases that remain
a fundamental impediment to genuine equality. Despite the promise of one
person, one vote, recent efforts by the Republican Party have
disproportionately sought to strip the right to vote from African Americans
and people of colour (who typically vote for the Democrats) across the
nation.

Such policies reflect a deep-rooted thread of racism at the heart of
American politics – a wound that has festered since the nation shaped
itself through slavery and, in academic George Lipsitz’s words, the
possessive investment in whiteness as cultural capital. The systemic racism
of disenfranchisement can be traced through America’s history: under
slavery, the Constitution included a clause that valued black lives at the
rate of 3/5 of whites’, adjusting population counts to increase the wealth
and voting power of slaveholders. After the Civil War, Jim Crow legislation
suppressed the supposedly liberated black vote by making voting
near-impossible through segregation, violence, and prohibitive
requirements. One of the outrages of the 2016 elections was the clarity
with which such strategies have been resurrected. Georgia’s Democratic
candidate Stacey Abrams amassed unprecedented success as an underdog,
calling attention to the 1.5 million voters disenfranchised by her
Republican competitor Brian Kemp. Despite a narrow loss, she has expanded
her voter registration campaign nation-wide to encourage people of colour
to participate in elections. In Florida, Democratic Gubernatorial candidate
Andrew Gillum lead a successful campaign to restore voting rights to
ex-felons – an outcome that enables over 1 million formerly disenfranchised
people to vote, against a staggering near 18 per cent of the state’s black
population who had been politically excluded. Indeed, while scholar
Michelle Alexander defines the ‘new Jim Crow’ in response to the
overwhelming incarceration of African Americans, there are clear links
between this imprisonment and the desire among some policymakers to exclude
the black population from public society.

This information is and should be terrifying in the context of a nation
that prides itself on an ideal of freedom. Such outrage is also a moment of
reckoning, however, and could signal a true shift in public involvement in
democracy. The rapid success of a group of new candidates, like Abrams and
Gillum, who speak truth to power against voter suppression shows the
increasing confidence of an empowered electorate that refuses to be
silenced. As America prepares for its next national vote, it is for voters,
and more importantly, policymakers and candidates, to continue the fight to
finally bring truth to the Founding Fathers’ promise that all Americans are
equal. As the Democratic successes in 2016 show, the gradual erosion of
voter rights long-occurring in America cannot last.

*Image: TribLive*

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