Okay But Why Are There So Many New Voting Laws?
We all want free and fair elections where everyone who’s legally able to vote can make their voice heard. And it’s also extremely important to ensure our elections are safe and secure. These things are pretty fundamental to a healthy and functioning democracy.
And here’s something else that’s extremely important to note: every time the experts study voter fraud, they find almost zero evidence that undocumented immigrants or anyone else is voting illegally. So then… why are there so many new voting laws out there?
A Brief History of Voting in America
First, here’s a quick recap of the last 200 years:
- Late 1700’s: Our Founding Fathers talked a lot about freedom and independence, but they were actually totally fine with restricting the right to just vote to white male property owners.
- Early 1800’s: Voting rights were expanded to include white males who didn’t own property.
- 1870: Congress passed the 15th Amendment, which said that nobody (although they were still only talking about men!) can be denied the right to vote based on their race. So states found other ways to keep Black men from voting, like literacy tests, poll taxes, as well as intimidation and violence.
- 1920: Congress passed the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote, but the same ways that states had been keeping Black men from voting were now used against Black women too.
- 1924: Native Americans were given the right to vote.
- 1950’s: Asian Americans were given the right to vote.
- 1965: As a result of the Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act was passed, outlawing poll taxes, literacy tests and other racist barriers to voting.
It took about 2 centuries, but we were finally getting to a place where everyone could vote. And then in 2013, Shelby County vs. Holder happened. The United States Supreme Court ruled that parts of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act were unconstitutional. Conservative Justices like John Roberts declared that racial discrimination is no longer an issue in this country and that states with a history of racial discrimination, like Texas, could now be trusted to oversee their own voting laws. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg said that throwing out the Voting Rights Act is “like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
This opened the door for states, as well as the federal government, to start chipping away at our voting rights. The true goal of all these new “voting rights” bills is to determine the outcome of elections by carefully controlling who can vote – in other words, voter suppression.
Voter suppression has been around ever since the right to vote was extended beyond white men. Everyone should be able to vote, regardless of party affiliation. Yet extremists across the country are coming after our right to vote. They know their ideas are wildly unpopular with the majority of Americans, so they’ve decided to go around us by keeping us from voting. And ultimately, that’s what all these new laws are really about.