Still no action to reverse St. Johns County Election Supervisor's denial of any early voting location anywhere within the territorial limits of the City of St. Augustine.
In Texas, Michigan, North Carolina and elsewhere, federal courts in recent months have struck down one discriminatory voting law after another in a series of major victories for voting-rights advocates. Millions of voters, especially minorities who might have otherwise been obstructed by voter-identification requirements or shortened early voting times, will now be able to cast their ballots in the presidential election.
But these victories, though significant and hard-won, concern only major state-level voting laws. They obscure a more pernicious problem: In towns, cities and counties across the country — particularly throughout the Deep South — many discriminatory voting changes have been made at more local levels. Because officials don’t always have to give notice in advance about such changes, voters may learn of them only when they show up at the polls.
Local elections — for mayors, for members of school boards and city councils — affect such critical everyday issues as education policy and policing priorities. Consequently, local voter discrimination can have a more direct impact on the lives of minority voters than can voter discrimination in presidential elections and should worry us the most.
Consider some recent examples:
In March, the City Council of Daphne, Ala., shrank the number of polling places from five locations in white and black districts to just two polling places located in districts that are mostly white. As a result, black voters are now forced to travel farther than before, yet most white voters face no new burdens.
Similarly, although a federal appeals court in July reinstated seven extra days of early voting in North Carolina, the Board of Elections in Wake County, N.C., decided this month to limit early voting to one site, rather than 20, during the restored early voting period.
In March, civil rights groups wrote to the Board of Elections for St. Louis County, Mo., about its decision to locate polling places in municipal buildings that share space with local police departments. Advocates rightly worried that this could intimidate and deter minorities from voting there amid tensions between the police and the black community.
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And earlier this year, 120,000 New Yorkers were wrongly purged from the voter rolls ahead of the presidential primary in April. One analysis found that people with Hispanic surnames were purged at a rate 60 percent greater than everyone else. Moreover, the list of top names of purged voters also included typically Asian surnames, including Wong, Chan, Lee and Li.
Statewide changes can also contribute to this kind of hyper-local discrimination. Alabama began enforcing its voter-identification law in 2014. The law lets voters without the required photo identification cast a ballot if two poll workers vouch for the voter’s identity. But in practice, poll workers can use this requirement arbitrarily. Giovana Ambrosio, an 18-year-old from Franklin County, Ala., went to the polls but could not vote this year because she could not get the required identification and didn’t personally know any election officials at the polling place. Her right to vote was left totally to the discretion of the local poll workers.
These are just a few of many worrisome voting changes recounted in “Democracy Diminished,” a new report written by my colleague Leah Aden of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Many of these local and statewide changes happen in places formerly covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Under Section 5, states or towns with a long history of racial discrimination had to get permission from the Department of Justice or a federal court in Washington before they could make any voting changes. They also had to prove beforehand that their proposed changes weren’t intended to discriminate and wouldn’t have that effect.
But in 2013, after the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, these changes no longer required federal scrutiny before going into effect. My organization, which closely monitors voting changes, has seen more voter discrimination — not less — in the three years since the court’s decision, which declared, with considerable naïveté, that “things have changed in the South.” If the core of the Voting Rights Act had remained, it would have blocked the discriminatory state and local voting changes described above.
This is why Congress must act immediately to restore the Voting Rights Act to full strength. Unfortunately, the bipartisan Voting Rights Amendment Act and Voting Rights Advancement Act, which are designed to do precisely that, have both stalled in Congress. The chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, Representative Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia and Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, have refused to hold hearings this year — even though they both voted to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act 10 years ago.
According to Mr. Goodlatte, the act remains “very strong,” despite its gutting by the Supreme Court. Mr. Goodlatte is wrong.
It is unacceptable that he and Congress refuse to hold hearings on bills that would stop voting discrimination before it happens. Congress has a moral and constitutional obligation to prevent the potentially devastating consequences of these voting changes on minority communities in this election year and beyond.
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Thanks to publishers and the Internet, those who dare to continue old school politics have and will continue to be 'ousted'
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