One Person, No Vote

“SECTION 260: The income arising from the sixteenth section trust fund, the surplus revenue fund, until it is called by the United States government, together with a special annual tax of thirty cents on each hundred dollars of taxable property in this state, which the legislature shall levy, […] and provided further, that nothing herein contained shall prevent the legislature from first providing for the payment of the bonded indebtedness of the state and the interest thereon out of all the revenue of the state.” 

Anderson includes a single unbroken sentence from the Mississippi constitution to demonstrate the disingenuousness of the literacy test. Senator Theodore Bilbo bragged about how most White people and no Black people could read this verbose document, and the state underfunded schools to ensure an ignorant populace. While White applicants usually receive easier passages, officials weren’t worried if these tests eliminated them either.

“Alabama civil rights attorney Hank Sanders recognized the revolutionary, transformative impact that the preclearance provision could have. Section 5 of the VRA, he explained, ‘can complete something this country started 200 years ago. That something is not complete, it is called Democracy.’” 

Anderson stresses the importance of litigation in securing civil rights and eliminating barriers like the White primary. However, this is a long process fraught with setbacks. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act forces jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to obtain approval for voting laws before their enactment—the strictest measure since Reconstruction. Sanders’s statement demonstrates the impact for more than just people of color: American democracy, restricted since its founding by race, gender, and property requirements, might finally have true representative government.

“The court decided that the VRA was unfair because it singled out and punished the South (which obviously meant whites in the South), unfair because the 2006 reauthorization included the same states and counties as in the original bill, unfair because blacks had won multiple elections and were voting in record numbers, and thus unfair because the racism of the past, which had led to the creation of the VRA, obviously no longer determined access to the polls. The Shelby County v. Holder decision thus gutted Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which determined which locales came under federal oversight.” 

After outlining how anti-Voting Rights Act rhetoric formed over 60 years, Anderson uses parallelism to drive point-by-point how it overrode precedent in the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision on Shelby County v. Holder. The reasoning is wishful thinking at best, as Anderson shows how the spiritual successors to Jim Crow laws emerge and how candidates like Barack Obama enflame racist sentiments. The 2016 election, the first federal election since Shelby, coincides with an improbable 14% drop in Black voters.

“The final, and perhaps most important, lesson, was to lie. Lie often, loudly, boldly, unashamedly, and consistently. Lie until it drowned out the truth. Lie until no amount of evidence could prove otherwise. Lie until there was no other reigning narrative. Just lie.” 

While outlining the cynical lessons the GOP learned from the 2000 election, Anderson stresses how difficult it is to overcome an organization that commits itself to lying. She notes that Missouri Senator Kit Bond’s claims about election fraud have “a kernel of truth” as there have been instances of people registering their dog to vote. No one voted under the dog’s name, and investigations never discover the vast conspiracies that politicians use to justify voter ID laws. False claims have also become a fixture of the Trump administration as the number of often easy-to-disprove claims overwhelms factchecking efforts (Kessler, Glen, et. al. “President Trump Has Made More Than 20,000 False or Misleading Claims.” The Washington Post, 13 July 2020)

“The tangle of rules, regulations, and the state voter ID law had consequences—real-life consequences. […] in Munchie, Indiana, a tight mayoral race, with only nine votes separating the candidates, hung in the balance of fourteen provisional ballots and ‘five contested absentee ballots.’ But because, under the rules for provisional ballots, they had only ten days to get the necessary documents to prove their identity, ‘their votes went uncounted in the final total’ which the victor won by eleven votes.” 

Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections was an early effort to mitigate the harmful power of voter ID laws. The NAACP and ACLU demonstrated how the disfranchisement safeguards in Indiana’s SEA 483 failed in real-world situations as citizens struggled to get IDs and the strict timetables for provisional ballots impacted elections. Amplified voter fraud rhetoric influenced the Supreme Court’s decisions against the civil rights organizations, and Justice John Paul Stevens chastised the groups for using extrarecord studies even though the defendants did not share the same burden of proof.

“With the GOP control of more than half the nation’s state governments, these bills arose like dragon’s teeth out of the soil of racism and disfranchisement; out of a Republican vision of democracy that views most citizens as unwashed, ‘uninformed,’ and, therefore, unworthy. Iowa congressman Steve King lamented the passing of ‘a time in American history when you had to be a male property owner in order to vote.’”

The Republican Party’s sweeping victory in the 2010 midterm elections, particularly 26 state legislatures in the South and swing states, accelerated the spread of voter ID laws and other suppression tactics that affect today’s elections. This includes more than 180 voter ID bills over the next two years. Anderson calls these measures racist and indicative of the party’s condescending views, and the Steve King quote is similar to sentiments from Jim Crow politicians who resented threats to their power.

“The lie of voter fraud breaks a World War II veteran down to a simple, horrifying statement: ‘I wasn’t a citizen no more.’” 

A key component to Anderson’s argument is to depict voter suppression as a moral failure and not just as political math. As expansive as her statistics and research are, it can be easy to overlook the individual impact that these laws have. Quoting a World War II veteran also serves two points: This man not only has fought for his country, but the fact that he is old enough to have lived during segregation shows that its injustices are not in the distant past.

“The story read like something straight out of Stalinist Russia. But this casualty list was in the United States in the twenty-first century. Virginia: 41,637 purged. Florida: 182,000 purged. Indiana: 481,235 purged. Georgia: 591,549 purged. Ohio: two million purged. With the flick of a bureaucratic wrist, millions of Americans—veterans, congressional representatives, judges, county officials, and most decidedly minorities—were erased.” 

Anderson compares voter roll purges to Soviet Union oppression tactics before individually listing the number of purges from each state. The types of people affected is important as officials will use change of address as a reason to drop people from the roles even if they move within the same district, which would affect elected officials and county employees. Readers who are critical of Anderson might view this writing as alarmist, but her research and historical insights show that she is finally giving these topics the concern they deserve.

“‘I’m a veteran, my father’s a veteran, my grandfather’s a veteran,’ he said, stewing; we fought ‘for the country…now they aren’t giving me my right to vote, the most fundamental right I have? I just can’t believe it.’ […] ‘I’ve been paying my taxes, paying my property taxes, registering my car,’ he said. ‘All the data was there for (election officials) to know’ that he still lived in the same house, on the same block, in the same jurisdiction. He had not moved. Nor had he changed his name. He was Larry Harmon in 2008. He remained Larry Harmon in 2015.” 

Anderson uses the story of software engineer and Navy veteran Larry Harmon to demonstrate the type of voter that Ohio’s voter roll purges affect. The only thing that Harmon did to violate state guidelines was vote infrequently, an overreach against the intent of the National Voting Rights Act. Ohio’s Secretary of State claimed that they do send notifications informing people of their impeding removal, but people of color are both less likely to respond to jargon-filled government requests and more likely to change address. In any case, officials shouldn’t need to contact Harmon because his property and vehicle payments should prove he’s still a resident.

“The lack of consistency, rigor, and accuracy led a ‘shocked’ Mark Swedlund, a database expert whose clients include several Fortune 500 companies, to dismiss Crosscheck’s ‘childish methodology.’ It’s too error-prone. ‘God forbid,’ he noted, ‘if your name is Joseph or Jose. You’re probably suspected of voting in 27 states.’” 

The Interstate Crosscheck data-matching system removes hundreds of thousands of alleged fraudulent voters. The system has two fatal flaws: First, the databases store inconsistent information with no Social Security Numbers or even middle names to accurately trace people. Second, the system is disproportionately punitive towards people of color as they are over representative in 85 of the 100 most-common last names, such as Washington, Hernandez, Garcia, Lee, and Kim. As a result, White people only represent 8% of names on purge lists, while African Americans represent 45%.

“Even Republicans seemed to agree. Forty-four states, including Kobach’s Kansas, balked at the Pence Commission’s data request. Mississippi planted its feet squarely on the ground of states’ rights and told the commission ‘it could go jump in the Gulf.’ Democrats were equally opposed. ‘This is a coordinated attempt to create a national voter registration file that would reside in the White House…We might as well let [Russian President Vladimir] Putin just get a zip drive of every registered voter’s information in the nation,’ Kentucky’s Alison Grimes remarked […].” 

Kris Kobach pursued Donald Trump’s favor for his anti-immigrant agenda, and the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity he helped guide was a gaggle of voter suppression activists. However, it gained bipartisan scorn after it demanded data from all 50 states to create a “Crosscheck on anabolic steroids” that would include Social Security numbers and voting patterns (90). Although lawsuits led to its demise, it exposed how damaging these tactics can be to democracy under a willing president.

“In 2016, the Economist Intelligence Unit, which had evaluated 167 nations on sixty different indicators, reported that the United States had slipped into the category of a ‘flawed democracy,’ where, frankly, it had been ‘teetering for years.’ Similarly, the Electoral Integrity Project, using a number of benchmarks and measurements, was stunned to find that when it applied those same calculations in the United States as it had in Egypt, Yemen, and Sudan, North Carolina was ‘no longer considered to be a fully functioning democracy.’” 

The expansion of democracy is a major part of American foreign policy both to distinguish the country from authoritarian regimes and to justify actions like the Iraq War. However, voter suppression undermines the nation’s moral high ground—Anderson details the use of Jim Crow violence in Soviet propaganda in Chapter 1, and today’s gerrymandering and electoral office abuses render some state elections as illegitimate as the developing countries it criticizes. American suppression efforts might not be as blatant as eliminating opposition rivals, but they nearly guarantee one-party rule.

“The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed and ruled that this was a ‘justiciable’ matter, and the courts did have authority to weigh in on the issue. The constitutional rights of American citizens have been impinged upon by state action. In using the 1901 statute to draw congressional districts, Tennessee had diluted the votes of some citizens while privileging others. That dilution violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. In its decision, in pointing to the disparity in the weight of votes, the court, defined ‘one person, one vote’ as the standard benchmark for democracy.” 

The Supreme Court’s 1962 ruling on Baker v. Carr was a landmark decision that allowed courts to hear gerrymandering cases. The Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren looked past Tennessee’s insistence that redistricting was a purely political matter and at the reality of one-third of the state’s population, mostly rural, electing two-thirds of its representatives. While the Court upheld the ruling in subsequent cases, it has since struggled to address modern gerrymandering along political lines.

“[Law professor Nicholas] Stephanopoulos and [political scientist Eric] McGhee have determined that ‘an efficiency gap larger than 7% may show that one party holds an unconstitutional ‘systemic advantage’ over the other.’ For example, between the 1970s and 1990s, Republicans averaged a 1.5 percent efficiency gap in their favor. Yet, ‘in the three elections since 2010, that figure rose to 12.3%.’” 

The Supreme Court case Gill v. Whitford centers on the Wisconsin Republican Party’s secret redistricting scheme in 2010, and the plaintiffs suggest mathematical means of determining partisan gerrymandering. This includes an efficiency gap for districts that are so noncompetitive that some representatives receive over 90% of the vote. While Chief Justice John Roberts dismisses these metrics as “a bunch of baloney” (113), it is important to consider formulas like this as mapping technologies use advance calculations to make gerrymandering more precise than ever. 

“When pressed to account for a policy that could have this kind of deleterious impact, the chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party explained, ‘I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read African American—voter turnout machine.’”

Ohio’s secretary of state allows one early voting location per county, which is only fair if one ignores population and demographic differences. African Americans make up a little under 2,000 residents in some counties, but the capital of Columbus in Franklin County has 274,000 African American residents, which leads to hours-long lines and depressed turnout for poorer citizens. The racist motivation for this policy is reflected by the Republican official’s statement, which treats Black voters as a piece of political calculus rather than as citizens the party should reach out to.

“The second unspoken and significant flaw was to treat the local courthouse—a central component of a notorious criminal justice system—as a viable, race-neutral space to obtain a voter ID card. This despite the fact that the name Scottsboro haunts the halls of justice, where “Yellow Mama,” the electric chair, sent flames shooting out of the head of one of the condemned and took nineteen minutes to burn to death another inmate, where more than half of those on death row in the state are African Americans, and where the prison population is 54 percent black although African Americans are only 26 percent of the population.” 

The criminal justice system can be intimidating to the citizens it over-polices during elections, whether it is by stationing officers by polling stations or tacking severe penalties to election laws. Alabama officials justify DMV closings by making voter IDs available at courthouses, but their historical trauma is as much a discouragement as the limited hours. Anderson briefly references the Scottsboro Boys, a group of nine African Americans that an all-White jury sent to death row for false rape charges. The case led to two Supreme Court rulings, Powell v. Alabama and Norris v. Alabama that threw the case out for denying the defendants a right to counsel and a jury of their peers (“Scottsboro Boys.” History.com, Updated 9 September 2020).

“What emerged on the electoral battlefield in 2017, in fact, was a modern-day version of resistance that drew upon the historical strengths and tactics of mobilizing against a state determined to quash the right to vote. LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, therefore, scoffed at media representations of a demoralized, low-energy apathetic black community. ‘They never could see black people in Alabama, in a highly conservative racially polarized state…They never could see our power, even when we did.’” 

Despite the state’s prominence in the civil rights movement, news outlets often portray Alabama as a conservative stronghold and not as a state that still restricts people of color. The decades of Republican dominance, however, do not mean that there weren’t Black organizations who recognized that it was local leadership in places like Selma that made the difference. The ignorance of these efforts led state officials to predict a low turnout and pundits to portray Doug Jones’s election as a last-ditch scramble.

“Doors. Doors. Doors. Turn ya folk out,’ he entreated.” 

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin shares the secret to his upset victory and Southern politics in general. Door-to-door canvassing is critical to engaging voters and warning them of the consequences of inaction in a way that phone calls and advertising would not. Woke Vote targeted 12 HBCU campuses with 270 canvassers knocking on 14,000 doors. Paying these activists was also important, with Senate Majority PAC providing $6 million for the ground game and the Black Voters Matter Fund crowdfunding $200,000 to support 460 canvassers across 30 organizations.

“Given the tendency to understaff and underresource polling stations in minority neighborhoods, it was imperative that people knew that ‘if you’re in line at the time the polls close, stay in line because you have a right to vote.’ Similarly, BlackPAC ‘mobilized a group of lawyers who bounced around precincts and local courts on election day.’ Meanwhile, Pastor Glasgow explained election law to poll workers who tried to reject mugshots as an acceptable form of ID, and his intervention ensured that those whose Fifteenth Amendment rights he had helped restore were able to cast their ballots.” 

Anderson treats Election Day as a battleground where lawyers and activists must be proactive to ensure that everyone can participate. This is especially true when considering Alabama’s sizable suppression efforts—long lines in cities, no early voting, poorly trained poll workers, and even reports of removed disability ramps. These finish-line efforts were critical to Jones’s victory as the 45.4% overall voter turnout rate exceeded expectations with Jones winning by 73.4% of the vote in counties with high turnout.

“In 2015, Oregon pioneered automatic voter registration (AVR). Citizens who ‘apply for or renew their driver’s license’ at the DMV are automatically registered to vote unless they opt out. Under AVR, Oregon added 68,583 new voters in just six months. By the end of July 2016, the state’s ‘torrid pace’ had swelled the rolls by 222,197 new voters. And equally impressive, its voter turnout rate in the 2016 election increased from 64 to 68 percent, ‘more than any other state’—but also the income, age, and racial diversity of the electorate was enhanced by AVR, as was the participation of first-time and sporadic voters.”

Anderson sees automatic voter registration as a positive step towards representational democracy with 15 states introducing proposals in 2018. While most of these states lean towards the Democratic Party, this system actually fulfills what Interstate Crosscheck claims it wants to accomplish: There are no inconsistencies between systems if citizens complete the applications at the same time, and it automatically keeps data up to date. Some states further remove racial and economic barriers by extending participation to social service organizations that can send verified files to election officials.

“Thus, when thirty-one states are vying to develop new and more ruthless ways to disfranchise their population, and when the others are searching desperately for ways to bring millions of citizens into the electorate, we have created a nation where democracy is simultaneously atrophying and growing—depending solely on where one lives. History makes clear, however, that this is simply not sustainable. […] Or, as Abraham Lincoln soberly observed, ‘I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.’” 

Anderson ends the Conclusion by drawing a direct line between voter suppression and slavery. Both are systems that give one group of people dominance while stealing the autonomy of others. Both have racist motivations and employ physical and legal means of control. Both leave the United States in a position where the major political parties have diametrically opposing views. If voter suppression remains impossible to reform, America will remain in the hands of those who don’t represent the will of the people.

“Whether I’m a student living here for four or five years or a permanent resident, it doesn’t mean my voice doesn’t count.” 

Kalynn Lakes, the NAACP student chapter president at Prairie View A&M, explains the importance of providing early voting on campus. Waller County, Texas, whose off-campus population is majority White, has a history of limiting voting access at the HBCU and successfully restricted voting access to three non-weekend days due to budget and time restraints. Voting is an important habit to start early, and the college should have a voice in local affairs as a source of services and employees. Plus, college students are not the only residents who might live in the area for just a few years.

“There it was. The greater the number of African Americans in a precinct, the greater the drop-off in votes. Equally important, it wasn’t just the blacker the district, the more votes that disappeared. There was a strange twist. This phenomenon did not occur with absentee ballots from that area. It didn’t happen in districts that leaned just as heavily toward Democrats but were predominantly white. It didn’t even happen in African American districts with early voting. It only happened when those who lived in predominately African American neighborhoods voted via the machines—the ones that were vulnerable and susceptible to hacking—on election day. Then their votes evaporated. All 127,000 of them. Just gone.” 

As Georgia Secretary of State, Brian Kemp resisted efforts to replace outdated voting equipment with hacking vulnerabilities. In addition to fewer machines to majority Black counties than requested, forgotten power cords, and Election Day malfunctions, statisticians found an anomaly where the insurance commissioner race had more votes than the lieutenant governor race. Whereas ballots normally have a 0.8% drop-off in vote numbers between governor and lieutenant governor, Black neighborhoods saw a 13% drop. This in connection with voter roll purges, withheld registration applications, and Kemp’s refusal to abdicate his position cast this election’s integrity in doubt.