Voter suppression: Corruption in any part sickens the whole

We want to address the use of devices, deception and litigation to disenfranchise classes of voters in order to maintain in office the very politicians whose financial sponsors seek to undermine minority and working class citizens’ right to participate in the governance of the commonwealth, regardless of their economic or social status.

Since Colonial days there has been a palpable tension between the economic classes, between the haves and the have-nots. As a nascent democratic republic, nowhere has this struggle been more apparent than in the allocation of the right to vote, including the denial of that right to blacks (because they are black), to the poor (because they are poor), to the needy (because they are needy), and to women (because they are “chattel”).

The struggle between those seeking to expand the franchise and those determined to limit suffrage to the privileged (the white, male and propertied) has been an up-and-down battle.

The guarantee of the voting rights of blacks, the poor and other minorities as intended by the 15th Amendment was defeated for nearly 100 years (1870 to 1965) by Southern (and, to tell the truth, Northern) Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, literacy tests and similar devices. Women’s suffrage was put off entirely until 1920 by the determined opposition of the male-dominated elite.

Over 50-plus years after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights and the 1965 Voting Rights Acts, however, the effort to expand and protect voting rights toward true universal suffrage seemed to have irresistible momentum. Unfortunately, in the last 10 years and especially since the 2016 election campaign, forces favoring the suppression and limitation of voting rights have been in the ascendance.

The 15th Amendment (no person shall be deprived of the right to vote due to his race or “previous condition of servitude”) was evaded by opponents of black and poor white suffrage through the use of “nonracial” voting restrictions, including poll taxes, literacy tests and brutal intimidation. The 1964 and 1965 acts were intended to remedy these evasions. The acts were generally successful over time when aggressively implemented as a priority by the federal government.

However, over the past few years, those opposed to expansion of the suffrage have developed new strategies to disenfranchise working-class and minority citizens.

For example, the Republican-majority Legislature in Ohio recently adopted legislation purging voting rolls of those who have not voted in two elections, thus striking from the rolls thousands of poor and minority voters who simply have been unable to vote in the past five or six years, often due to work, family and school commitments. This case has been recently heard by the U.S. Supreme Court and a majority of the court seems to have sided with Ohio.

The hard right’s efforts to disenfranchise have been largely successful in right-leaning “swing” states. As a graphic example, in 2016, Wisconsin’s Republican administration was able to purge 55,000 voters from the rolls and Trump won that state by 22,700 votes, which was less than 1 percent of the total.

The strategy selected to achieve this was to strike from the rolls any voter who had not voted in the past four years (each of these voters were to be sent a postcard, at their last known address, telling them that if they failed to update their information, they would be stricken from the rolls).

The 1965 Voting Rights Act was designed to ensure against these and other anti-democratic disenfranchising actions and specifically required states and their political subdivisions not to indulge in such practices.

Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Act established a two-step formula to trigger federal oversight — 1) is there the existence of a test or device to restrict registration, and 2) as of Nov. 11, 1964, is there less than 50 percent registration of persons of voting age — to determine whether federal intervention and monitoring was required for “preclearance” of any changes in the voting requirements.

Unfortunately for the forces seeking a more democratic society, in 2013 the Supreme Court (in Shelby County v. Holder ) decided that those states which had been historically the worst offenders were no longer subject to “preclearance” under the 1965 Act because the November 1964 data was no longer helpful and imposed an unconstitutional burden on the states.

Since 2014, all attempts to reauthorize the “preclearance” provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act have failed. Why? The opposition of the Republican-dominated House and Senate is financed, as virtually all opposition to the expansion (and the maintenance) of the franchise has been financed since 1964, largely by the top one-tenth of 1 percent of owners of United States private assets — families such as the Koch brothers and the Mercers, who have been supporting the ultra-right “think” tanks responsible for the myths of “voter fraud” to support disenfranchising devices such as Wisconsin’s Voter ID proposal.

While Vermont appears to be free of overt voter suppression, we have every reason to be deeply concerned. It has been argued that corruption in any one part sickens the entire body politic.

To this extent, the disenfranchisement of the poor and minorities results not only in stifling their voices, but unfairly decreases that percentage of the voting population (nationally) devoted to the election of officials dedicated to effective regulation, environmental protection, fair and equitable international relationships, affordable universal health care, the funding of quality public education and true universal suffrage.

As a result, the generally progressive electorate of Vermont is adversely and seriously impacted by the exclusion from the voting rolls of minorities and working-class voters in Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Texas, etc. Regardless of whatever Vermont can do to assure universal suffrage in this state, the purging of hundreds of thousands of minority and poor voters from the polls in the so-called swing states is unfair and anti-democratic.

This affects fair immigration policies, women’s health programs, aggressive protection of civil rights, effective steps to minimize and reverse environmental degradation, fair tax policies, public funding of education as an investment, etc.

Possible solutions

Any effort to effectively push back against the well-financed and determined anti-democratic right requires not only the election of a House and Senate not dominated by the stalking horses of the one-tenth of 1 percent — such as the Freedom Lobby, the Ethan Allen Institute and their like — but by the advancement of some realistic solutions.

• Extended voting hours — polls open so that, no matter what shift you work, you can vote, 5 a.m. to midnight.

• If you are standing in line to vote, you vote. No closing of polls because lines are too long or you come from work late.

• Same-day registration and voting.

• If you live in the district, you can vote at any polling booth for a statewide election, presidential election, U.S. Senate election or congressional district.

The goal is to give voters the flexibility to vote.

Thus, we “make America great again.”

Allen C.B. Horsley, Edward Frey and Marc Segal live in Stowe. Email letters to news@stowereporter.com.