Voting and our history

Shannon Bohrer

(3/2022) While it is 2022, I can’t help but think that we are repeating the previous several years. Covid is still here, partly because some people don’t believe in science, while others see covid through a political lens. The political divisions are still here, partly because one party is still espousing the "big lie" of a stolen election. We are still dealing with the January 6th insurrection, you guessed it, because of the "big lie." Tourists did not assault and injure over 140 officers. I never saw the movie "Groundhog Day," but I feel that we are in a similar perpetual cycle, reliving the same problems and issues, with few - if any agreeable solutions. While we have numerous issues that divide us, many of them viewed from a political perspective, the one point that has been pushed to the forefront is voting rights.

Because of the big lie that the last election was rigged, various states have proposed new voting laws with the pretext of ensuring voting integrity. Over 250 new laws have been proposed to limit early voting, mail-in voting, reductions in drop boxes, and even eliminating polling locations. Some states are giving the state delegates authority over local elections. Several states have purged voter rolls and proposed that in Presidential elections, either elected individuals or appointed state employees could have the authority to appoint electors that the public did not vote for. The new laws have been proposed in 43 states, with many of them already enacted.

In many ways, some of the problems we have are not new; they have just been recycled or repeated from history. Our history on the topic of equality and voting has been a controversial issue ever since our country was established. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence, says "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." All men were literally white male property owners; the equality did not apply to the poor, the enslaved people, or women.

As a nation, we have sporadically moved in the direction of equality. In the 1828 election, for the first time, white men that were not property owners were allowed to vote. After the civil war, the 15th amendment was ratified that allowed black men to vote. However, after the amendment was passed, many states enacted laws that enforced racial segregation and hampered and discouraged minority voting. While the laws said we were all equal, except females, voting by black men was strongly discouraged by state laws and other actions, including intimidation, beatings, and even hangings.

Legally, the 15th amendment allowed minorities to vote, as long as the minority was a male. Females, white or black, could not vote until 1920, when the 19th amendment passed. As a nation, we are 246 years old, and yet women have only been allowed to vote for 102 years. It was after 1920 that women were allowed to vote. The black females often faced the same "Jim Crow" laws that discouraged black males from voting. The "Jim Crow" type laws continued into the 20th century, significantly inhibiting voting through poll taxes, voting restrictions, and limited polling places.

The central idea of a democracy is the right to vote, and because our history on voting rights was so horrendous, in 1965, the government passed the voting rights act. The simple idea was that everyone should have access to the voting booth was finally codified into law 189 years after the Declaration of Independence. However, in 2013, the supreme court limited some of the oversight laws related to the voting rights act and, while doing so, told congress that it was their responsibility to update the voting laws. That has not happened.

The new proposals of restrictive voting laws are being justified, under the pretext of ensuring fair elections, even though the last election was deemed one of the most secure and fair in our history. The reality is that many of the new proposed laws are designed to disenfranchise voters, repeating our history. One example is the State of Georgia, which reduced drop box locations in and around Atlanta. Since the supreme court struck down the enforcement actions in the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Georgia has added 2 million more voters to its rolls and simultaneously reduced its polling locations by 10 percent. On the final day of the last Georgia primary, the average wait time to vote was only 6 minutes, at the polling location where 90 percent of the voters were white. If the polling location was 90 percent or more black, the average wait time was 51 minutes. These wait times were before Georgia enacted the newer and more restrictive voting laws.

Our history of equity, voting, and racism is well known, and those problems continue. Going backward with newer restrictive voting laws is not the direction of a real democracy. After the election of our first black president, we witnessed some new hate groups, some with the agenda of revolution, because they did not agree with the direction of the country. Since his election, and especially after his re-election, the anger and hate groups flourished. It has been widely reported that by the year 2040, white people in this country will no longer enjoy being the majority. While many might say otherwise, apparently, a large number of white Americans don’t like the idea of being a minority.

When you have a significant segment of society that does not think all men and women are created equal, and they create conditions that allow the minority to rule over the majority, then democracy is in peril. When one party tells you not to trust the government, it becomes easier to believe the lie that Trump won. With the new voting laws that inhibit voting, will the republican party still tell their members that the election was fixed - if they lose -again? If the Democrats lose the next election, will they say the election was fixed because of voter suppression? What happens when both sides tell you not to trust the government?

If democracy is dependent upon the citizen's belief that their votes count in a fair and accessible election, what happens when that belief is questioned? Could the proposed and enacted new voting laws have the capacity to put our democracy in peril? I am reminded of what William Faulkner once said, "The past isn’t dead. It’s not even past."