Project 3 from WRT-101-022
Prompt: An essay about a contemporary challenge or problem that has significant roots in history. Essentially, you will tell a story about the past that illuminates the present.
Voter Suppression: Do We Blame The Constitution or Racism, or Are They One in the Same?
The 2020 elections set many historical firsts for voting in the middle of a global pandemic, in the middle of a modern civil rights movement, and after four years of an unprecedented presidential experience. All of the anger, happiness, and loss culminated in Joe Biden winning the presidency in the unforeseen. The state of Georgia, which has historically voted for the Republican candidate, was one of the deciding electoral college votes to declare the victor. This shocked many people but truthfully, it was the result of a lot of hard work by activists and politicians encouraging people to vote and making sure everyone was protected when doing so. Not only did Georgia go blue for the presidency, it also elected Raphael Warnock, Georgia’s first black senator, and Jon Ossoff, both Democrats. These senators also returned control of the Senate to Democrats as it split the legislature 50-50 with Kamala Harris, the first female, Southeast Asian, and black Vice President breaking the tie. There is no doubt that this election created huge shifts in the political landscape.
Legislators, mostly Republican, on the federal and state level also saw this dramatic change. In Georgia, Republicans in the state legislature passed a 98 page voting law package, filled with provisions that suppress the vote of Georgians, mostly black, living in urban areas, and low-income voters, the basis of current Democratic support. For example, the law would shorten the time in which you can request an absentee ballot, tighten the voter ID laws for absentee ballots, and lessen the amount of drop boxes in highly populated areas, among many other provisions (Corasaniti and Epstein). This phenomena isn’t limited to Georgia but is spreading across the country as legislators are claiming it is for the safety of our elections. Despite the reasons or impetus for enacting such laws, they will ultimately discourage the votes of many citizens which by definition is voter suppression.
This uprising of voting bills in the wake of the recent elections encourages many Americans to reexamine the foundations of our country. As Americans, we were always taught that voting is a fundamental right, that voting is an essential pillar of our government. However, watching state voter suppression bills unfold, leads us to question everything we thought about America. Why are people allowed to tailor our system to help some people and ignore others? Why is America still making it harder for people to vote?
The answers to these questions become much clearer when we read the Constitution. Firstly, the Tenth Amendment which reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people” (US Constitution). This amendment clearly gives power to the states when the Constitution does not give the federal government jurisdiction over the matter. For example, in Article I, Section 8, Congress has the power to lay and collect taxes, that is why we have a federal income tax. However, there is no mention of a federally controlled education system, therefore each state sets up their own curriculums. Secondly, in terms of elections, the only mention of such mechanisms is located in Article I, Section 4 which reads, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators” (US Constitution). So, as there is no power granted to the federal government to directly oversee election functions within the states, like the rules for voter registration or mail-in ballots, state legislatures write and pass their own seemingly fitting voting laws.
While the framers did not intend for many of our modern problems to arise out of their revolutionary democratic republic, when they wrote this document they effectively opened the door for the laws we see today. The Constitution, as it was ratified in 1787, never made restrictive voter laws illegal nor condemned, at that point in time, individual states denying the vote to women or indigenous people. Furthermore, the Constitution never declares voting as a right for all people without infringement. It never guarantees voting as an inherent right. The lack of direction in the Constitution is a direct connection to the abuse of power by the states to suppress the vote, in history and today.
The writings in the Constitution provide a very strong argument for the direct causes of voter suppression. However, it doesn’t take into account why legislators did it in the first place. Just because the Constitution may have passively allowed voter suppression doesn’t explain why people acted upon it and took the opportunity. To explain the motivations behind legislators that support voter suppression, we can look at the most obvious point in history where people were consistently disenfranchised and that is Reconstruction and its response, Jim Crow.
Reconstruction was the time in history starting right after the Civil War, 1865, to the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877. Reconstruction was marked by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments which freed slaves, gave the enslaved citizenship, and Black men the right to vote, respectively. It was also a time of great political progress in the South, shifting away from the Confederate values towards African American representation in state Senates, the establishment of educational infrastructures for the black community, and a Republican control of the federal government (History.com Editors).
That change of African Americans gaining political and social power during Reconstruction inflamed many people’s regressionary attitudes. The pushback against progress effectively ended Reconstruction through a series of compromises leading to the antithetical period of Jim Crow. Despite the methodology of ending Reconstruction, the motivation was fueled by racist, anti-progress attitudes, and a hunger for Democratic political control once again. Epperly and others, writing for Cambridge University Press, say “The suppression of Republican voting and the removal of a sufficient number of black and white Republicans from office through violence and intimidation meant that white Democratic “Redeemers” controlled law-making institutions in most Southern states by the late 1870s” (Epperly et al.). Epperly and others’ writings support the fact that Jim Crow was highly partisan. And, by reading historical accounts of Jim Crow, voter suppression was also highly motivated by racism. Democratic, not the Democratic party we know today, state legislatures passed laws requiring poll taxes and literacy tests as requirements to vote. Due to the backdrop of Jim Crow, most black people could not afford to pay the poll tax because they hadn’t built personal wealth and could not read or write because they were formerly enslaved therefore barring them from voting. Poor and illiterate whites were also excluded from voting due to the same laws, however they disproportionately targeted black citizens (Solomon et al.). Soloman and others, in their article for the Center for American Progress, also write, “White residents—even those who were low income and illiterate—were conveniently exempted from literacy tests thanks to “grandfather clauses,” which allowed anyone who was eligible to vote prior to the 15th Amendment, along with their descendants, to vote in election”. The realities of history make it glaringly obvious that opposition to social and political progress was motivated by partisanship, to make the party of the Confederacy stronger, and racism, to dismantle the newly enfranchised population.
In recent years but especially today in politics we are experiencing a similar transfer of power in the political landscape that can be seen during Reconstruction. Additionally, this trend, like post-Reconstruction, is producing similar disenfranchising and racist actions that reflect the attitudes of Jim Crow. More progressive and modern “Democratic” ideas, although not confined to this label, are overwhelming the federal government due to the change in the presidency and both houses of Congress. More people are symbolically but also literally getting a seat at the table as the Biden Administration nominates, and the Senate passes, many historical firsts for the cabinet. Lloyd Austin, retired Army general and former Commander of the US Central Command, is the first black Secretary of Defense. Xavier Becerra is the first Latino to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, formerly California’s attorney general. Pete Buttigeg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana and presidential candidate, is the first out LGBTQ Cabinet secretary ever in history, as he serves as the Secretary of Transportation. Deb Haaland is the first Native American Cabinet secretary in history and serves as the Interior Secretary (Sullivan). This list could continue into the House and the Senate, but what is most important is people who oppose the values of such groundbreaking people are beginning to feel threatened by the power they now hold. Citizens, lobbyists, and politicians alike are finding that time and again, crucial voters, young voters, voters of color, of low-income areas, and those who are marginalized, are the deciding factors in many elections and are helping the country move towards diversity and representation. In the historic 2008 election of Barack Obama, young voters, ideologically marginalized voters, and low income voters were a decisive factor in his win (Rosentiel). In the 2020 election, urban voters, voters of color, and young voters were responsible for getting big electoral votes in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, The Brookings Institution reports (Frey). It is the same shift in country-wide political attitudes and demographics within government that is fueling the response of voter suppression. Not just widespread disenfranchisement, but targeted attacks against the previously discussed deciding voters that started this political movement towards the left.
Many Democratic political figures and even President Biden have said specifically that Georgia’s voter suppression bill is “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” (Sullivan and Vazquez). However, Jamelle Bouie, political analyst for CBS News, writes in his op-ed for The New York Times that arguing “yes” to a repeat of Jim Crow is misleading and undeserving the realities of the problem just like arguing “no” is historically inaccurate. In his piece titled “If It’s Not Jim Crow, What Is It?”, Bouie argues that democracy does not bloom and fall overnight, but instead it is a growing body that continues to evolve with the time. The Constitution wasn’t written the day independence was won, just as the Redeemers of the Reconstruction era didn’t retake governments after the Election of 1877. He explains that “No particular restriction was decisive”, that no law put the label of Jim Crow on this period of time until everything collided and created the intertwined political, social, cultural, and economic thing that is Jim Crow. Bouie writes, “the thing about Jim Crow is that it wasn’t “Jim Crow” until, one day, it was”. This powerful piece of writing by Bouie speaks nothing but truth to the realities of the Georgia law. However, his op-ed about his interpretation of current events based on historical facts is just that, an opinion.
While I find Jamelle Bouie’s argument that history is rhyming very persuasive, in my own eyes I see history repeating itself. The state laws are truthfully Jim Crow adjacent, because poll taxes are outlawed in federal elections thanks to the 24th Amendment and there is no outright, widespread support for domestic terrorist groups that endangered black voters. However, the racism and motivations that fueled many of the current laws’ creations and its support bases are similar if not exactly the same as the attitudes during Jim Crow.
Keith Bentele, an Associate Research Professor with the Southwest Institute of Research on Women (SIROW) in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona and a doctor in sociology, and Erin O’Brien, Associate Professor of Political Science at the College of Liberal Arts, UMass Boston and doctor in political science, conducted research to illuminate the motivations behind current voter suppression laws. Bentele and O’Brien used “multiple specialized regression approaches to examine factors associated with both the proposal and adoption of restrictive voter access legislation from 2006-2011”. Although they focused on the past decade, the findings still ring true today. The results from their study show proposing and passing voter suppression legislation is “highly partisan, strategic, and racialized affairs”. They discovered this through their quantitative research but also by analyzing the impact of the voting restrictions after the 2008 election and their impact on the following 2012 election. The authors lean on another study to emphasize the racial and partisan manner of such laws, it states “racial and ethnic minorities as well as Democrats were more likely to experience significantly longer waits [in the 2012 election]” (Bentele and O’Brien, 1104). The whole article supports ill-mannered incentives that are exactly the same as those during Jim Crow. White legislators at the state and federal level did not like the social and political change that enfranchising black men created, so they did the exact opposite and disenfranchised them. Bentele and O’Brien even emphasize in their conclusion that “the recent wave of restrictive-access legislation is rooted in longstanding racial and classist motivations revived for modern deployment” (Bentele and O’Brien, 1106). So, Jamelle Bouie is correct in saying this is not Jim Crow in the 21st century because the physical mechanisms are different but he forgets to consider that the emotional and for lack of a better word, logical, reasoning continues to be the same thereby deploying voter suppression laws whether it is an exact replica of Jim Crow or not.
The roots of the problem, when looking at the country and its relation to the present, are very clear. Voter suppression is a child of the Constitution and Jim Crow era attitudes, which arguably are now modern attitudes. Therefore, there is no longer the question of, “why is America still making it harder for people to vote?”, because the answer is the Constitution allowed it and racism fueled it. Instead, the question should be, “how do we fix it?”. What is particularly interesting about this question is the appearance of a chicken or the egg situation. Do we rewrite the Constitution or try to fix the racist attitudes, which comes first, or are they the same phenomena?
Both are easier said than done because the Constitution and racism are so deeply ingrained in American society and attitudes. There have been attempts in the past to bring more federal jurisdiction to state election systems like the Voting Rights Act of 1965. However, the response is the dismissal of systemic racial discrimination and Constitutional arguments in favor of the elections clause as seen in the case Shelby County v. Holder (“Shelby County v. Holder”). Therefore, it is my belief that both racism and rewriting the Constitution need to be resolved at the same time or we will continue to see both systems shut down any semblance of progress as it has done time and again. There are many proposed solutions to making voting more representative of populations like ranked choice voting and split electoral votes. However, these solutions only address the problem of fair representation and not the bigger issue of people not making it to the ballot box at all.
The Constitution and racism are one in the same. They consistently and dually support the institutions that were created for the majority and halt progress for the minority. It is imperative, in order for voter suppression to become extinct, that both problems are addressed simultaneously. This is not small, reactive action but large, sweeping legislation to change the physical systems that allow voter suppression to happen.
Works Cited
Bentele, Keith G., and Erin E. O’Brien. “Jim Crow 2.0? Why States Consider and Adopt Restrictive Voter Access Policies.” Perspectives on Politics, vol. 11, no. 4, 2013, pp. 1088–1116. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43280932. Accessed 31 Mar. 2021.
Bouie, Jamelle. “If It’s Not Jim Crow, What Is It?” New York Times, 6 Apr. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/opinion/georgia-voting-law.html. Accessed 13 Apr. 2021.
Corasaniti, Nick, and Reid J. Epstein. “What Georgia’s Voting Law Really Does.” New York Times, 2 Apr. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/us/politics/georgia-voting-law-annotated.html. Accessed 6 Apr. 2021.
Epperly, Brad, et al. “Rule by Violence, Rule by Law: Lynching, Jim Crow, and the Continuing Evolution of Voter Suppression in the U.S.” Perspectives on Politics, vol. 18, no. 3, 2020, pp. 756–769., doi:10.1017/S1537592718003584.
Frey, William H. “Exit polls show both familiar and new voting blocs sealed Biden’s win.” The Brookings Institution, 12 Nov. 2020, www.brookings.edu/research/2020-exit-polls-show-a-scrambling-of-democrats-and-republicans-traditional-bases/. Accessed 13 Apr. 2021.
History.com Editors. “Reconstruction.” HISTORY, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction. Accessed 12 Apr. 2021.
Rosentiel, Tom. “Inside Obama’s Sweeping Victory.” Pew Research Center, 5 Nov. 2008, www.pewresearch.org/2008/11/05/inside-obamas-sweeping-victory/. Accessed 13 Apr. 2021.
“Shelby County v. Holder.” Oyez, www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96. Accessed 28 Apr. 2021.
Solomon, Danyelle, et al. “Systematic Inequality and American Democracy.” Center for American Progress, 7 Aug. 2019, www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/473003/systematic-inequality-american-democracy/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2021.
Sullivan, Kate. “Here are the historic firsts in Biden’s administration.” CNN, 30 Dec. 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/11/30/politics/historic-firsts-biden-administration/index.html. Accessed 13 Apr. 2021.
Sullivan, Kate, and Maegan Vazquez. “Biden calls Georgia law ‘Jim Crow in the 21st Century’ and says Justice Department is ‘taking a look.'” CNN, 26 Mar. 2021, www.cnn.com/2021/03/26/politics/joe-biden-georgia-voting-rights-bill/index.html. Accessed 13 Apr. 2021.
US Constitution. Amendment X. National Constitution Center, constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-x. Accessed 7 Apr. 2021.
US Constitution. Art. I, sec. IV. National Archives, www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript. Accessed 8 Apr. 2021.