No one can legally prevent you from voting in the 2020 Presidential election. To thwart voter suppression efforts by Trump campaign officials and the Republican Party, voters must be alert and aware of their rights. Polls cannot legally be closed while people are still on line to vote. If there is an issue about your eligibility to vote or your name is not on the voter rolls, do not just walk away. Complete an affidavit ballot that will be counted later if your eligibility to vote is confirmed.
1. What should I do if they can’t find my name when I go to vote? You could have been removed from the voting rolls as an “inactive voter.” As of February 2020, there were over one million “inactive voters” in New York State. This can have happened if you have not voted in a number of years, changed your name because of marriage, or because a notice mailed to you by the local Board of Elections was returned by the Post Office. Request an “affidavit ballot.” These are not counted until after Election Day so county officials have a chance to confirm that you are eligible to vote. In 2016, there were approximately 25,000 affidavit votes cast in Nassau and Suffolk County New York alone. About half were confirmed as legal votes and counted in the election.
2. What is voter suppression? It is any attempt to prevent people from voting either through intimidation or by preventing them from registering or voting. Biased literacy tests, poll taxes, closing election polls, disenfranchising people who were incarcerated but have served their sentences, are all forms of voter suppression. You could also consider some ploys like gerrymandering districts to prevent the election of minority candidates a form of voter suppression.
3. Is voter suppression a partisan issue? Voter suppression is always a partisan issue, but which political party or groups are involved depends on the time and place. In the segregated south, starting with Reconstruction in the 1870s and continuing into the 1960s, the Democratic Party was responsible for preventing African Americans from registering and voting. In the 1890s, corporations offered to help their employees vote and told them not to bother to return to work if the company’s preferred candidate lost. Today voting suppression is a primary Republican Party campaign strategy. It tries to win elections by keeping people from voting. President Trump has called on armed rightwing militias to “stand by” at polling places that is an overt act of intimidation designed to suppress the vote. Court challenges to mail-in ballots is another Trump tactic.
4. How does voter suppression disproportionately affects minority communities? Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer testified how she was blocked from voting in the segregated south in the 1960s. According to Hamer, “Eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens. We were met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time.” Because she tried to register to vote, Hamer was forced by terrorist groups to flee her home and abandon her family. In 1981, New Jersey held an off-year election for state and local offices. On Election Day, Black and Latino residents watched as groups of men with armbands reading "National Ballot Security Task Force" appeared in their neighborhoods, tacking up signs that warned they were on the lookout for people casting fraudulent ballots. The same men, some of them armed, appeared at the polls, asking to see voters' registration cards and telling them they could not cast a ballot without them. More recently, after Florida voters approved a referendum permitting former felons who have completed their sentences to vote, the Republican controlled legislature and a Republican governor are trying to block the new voters by claiming they Florida money for their room and board while in prison. Most of these former prisoners are Black men who would likely vote for Democratic Party candidates.
5. What false claims about the election are being made? The Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan group committed to expanded democracy in the United States, responded to “falsehoods” that were being used to undermine public confidence in the 2020 Presidential election. Despite what Donald Trump claims, voter fraud, including by mail-in ballots, is exceedingly rare. Non-citizens and dead people are not voting in droves. Voting machines are not rigged. Delayed results because of mail-in ballots do not mean something is fishy. Recounts are not efforts to steal the election. They may be necessary to protect democracy.
6. What does modern-day voter suppression look like in comparison to past historical voter suppression? Conservative groups announced plans to have 50,000 volunteers “monitor” voting. In Philadelphia, Trump campaign “officials” were at polling places with cameras in an effort to frighten potential voters concerned about their privacy. In St. Petersburg, Florida, armed men dressed as security guards were positioned outside a polling station. There is concern that Republican operatives will patrol voting lines and demand to see state-issued voter identification even in states that do not require it. Do not let them intimidate you.
Remember, no one can legally prevent an American citizen and an eligible voter from voting in the 2020 Presidential election and that includes Donald Trump.
Follow Alan Singer on twitter at https://twitter.com/AlanJSinger1.