Vote Suppression

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• SOURCE: The Bulwark
  10/14/2020
  

  What Do We Do About Voter Intimidation?

  by Nicholas Grossman

  "Americans can vote for any candidate they want. But they should be able to do so absent intimidation, and every vote should count."  

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• 10/12/2020
  

  My Memories of Voter Suppression

  by Lawrence Wittner

  After witnessing firsthand the depth of struggle needed to secure the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the author says the 2013 Supreme Court decision to gut the VRA and subsequent acts by state governments to suppress the vote "betray the most basic principle of democracy."

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• SOURCE: CNN
  10/2/2020
  

  Trump's Call for Freelance Poll-Watchers Summons a Dark History

  by Nicole Hemmer

  In 1981, the Republican National Committee used threatening signs and deployed off-duty officers to polling places in Black and Latino neighborhoods to help win the New Jersey governorship. This is the first presidential election year since the decree expired, making Trump's call for supporters to "watch the polls" ominous. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  9/10/2020
  

  In 2020, Voting Rights are on the Ballot

  by Peniel Joseph

  Black citizenship remains the best yardstick to measure the nation’s democratic health, and even before the coronavirus pandemic, the Black vote in large parts of the country remained imperiled.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/8/2020
  

  Republicans Have Insufficient Evidence To Call Elections ‘Rigged’ And ‘Fraudulent’

  by Benjamin L. Ginsberg

  "Republicans trying to make their cases for stricter voting procedures in courts must deal with the basic truth that four decades of dedicated investigation have produced only isolated incidents of election fraud," writes a longtime Republican election lawyer.

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• SOURCE: Boston Globe
  9/6/2020
  

  The Supreme Court’s Starring Role In Democracy’s Demise

  by Carol Anderson

  The Supreme Court today repeats the shameful actions of the courts in the 1890s, which gave judicial cover to state laws explicitly designed to disenfranchise Black voters, by accepting bad faith arguments that the laws in question were race-neutral. 

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• SOURCE: TIME
  8/20/2020
  

  Jimmy Carter Tried to Make it Easier to Vote in 1977. The Right Stopped Him with the Same Arguments it’s Using Today

  by Rick Perlstein

  The ascendant New Right in the Republican Party thwarted efforts to make voting easier in the 1970s. Making voting difficult remains a central strategy for the party today. 

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• SOURCE: Election Law Blog
  8/21/2020
  

  Angelo Genova, Lawyer for DNC in the RNC Consent Decree Case for 40 Years, Sends Along Thoughts on Trump’s Comments About Sending Law Enforcement to the Polls in November

  A lawyer who litigated a key voter suppression case in 1981 argues that the expiration of the resulting federal consent decree means the parties may feel free to attempt to intimidate voters at the polls. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/21/2020
  

  Trump’s Claim He’ll Send Sheriffs to Polling Places is Revealing in a Lot of Unintended Ways

  The pledge to send police and military personnel to watch polling places echoes conduct that resulted in a 1981 consent decree against the Republican National Committee for voter intimidation in New Jersey. This is the first year that the RNC is not bound by the decree. 

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• SOURCE: The New York Times
  8/17/2020
  

  Trump Might Cheat. Activists Are Getting Ready.

  A report from the Transition Integrity Project predicts that, come November, Trump “is likely to contest the result by both legal and extralegal means.”

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  8/10/2020
  

  Armed Poll Watchers: New Jersey’s Cautionary Tale Ahead Of The 2020 Presidential Election

  by Mark Krasovic

  In the history of voter suppression in the United States – including attempts to stop Black and Latino people from voting – Republican tactics in the 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial race are worth highlighting.

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• SOURCE: Heather Cox Richardson
  4/5/2020
  

  Letters From An American, April 4, 2020

  by Heather Cox Richardson

  Manipulating the vote has a long and shameful history in America, but modern media and computer modeling has enabled today’s Republican Party to carve out its voters with surgical precision.

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• SOURCE: TIME
  4/7/2020
  

  Republicans Could Use the Coronavirus to Suppress Votes Across the Country. This Week We Got a Preview

  by Carol Anderson

  This week Wisconsin provided a glimpse of the dystopian democracy, in which American voters find their rights even more constrained.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  3/16/2020
  

  Closing Polling Places is the 21st Century’s Version of a Poll Tax

  by Joshua F.J. Inwood and Derek H. Alderman

  Delays and long lines at polling places represent the latest version of decades-long policies that have sought to reduce the political power of African Americans in the U.S.

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• 7-5-16
  

  The Shameful History of GOP Vote Suppression Started in the 1870s

  by Daniel Czitrom

  Back then they were trying to block urban voters.