The Right to Vote, The Right to Health: Voter Suppression as a Determinant of Racial Health Disparities

Civic participation is beneficial to one’s health. Conversely, being unable to participate, such as being unable to vote, may be detrimental for health. Barriers that prevent voting and civic participation, which constitute voter suppression, disproportionately impact people of color. Therefore, voter suppression may explain intractable racial health disparities. However, few studies have examined the connection between voter suppression and health. In consideration of the frequent, and increasing, reports of voter suppression in recent elections, including the rise in voter identification laws, the reduction in early voting opportunities, and the closing of polling places, the field of public health should address voter suppression as a significant determinant of health inequities. This paper suggests a framework for how voter suppression may operate to negatively impact health and well-being, especially for people of color. Lastly, directions for future research are recommended to begin to disentangle the complex relationship between civic participation and health

The New Face of Jim Crow: Voter Suppression in America

The radical right wing in America has developed an array of subtle and overt methods to suppress voter registration and turnout. The methods are targeted to constituencies most likely to oppose right-wing causes and candidates: low-income families, minorities, senior citizens and citizens for whom English is a second language.Some voter suppression is unintentional, the result of applying or misapplying changes in voting laws. However, voter suppression today is overwhelmingly achieved through regulatory, legislative and administrative means, resulting in modern-day equivalents of poll taxes and literacy tests that kept Black voters from the ballot box in the Jim Crow era.Couched in feel-good phrases such as "voter security" and "anti-voter fraud," these measures limit voter registration, turn voters away from polling places, and cast doubt on the validity of ballots. For example, stringent voter ID rules that require photo ID at the polls sound reasonable, until the estimated up to 12 percent of eligible voters who do not have a driver's license are figured in. And while "anti-fraud" measures sound good, in truth there is little evidence of organized voter fraud anywhere in the nation, while voter suppression tactics are varied and widespread.The Radical Right strategy of turning out base supporters while suppressing the votes of its opponents has often been successful. Legislatures controlled by far-right conservatives now determine the voting laws and how redistricting is conducted in many states. Governors, secretaries of state, and other election officials, supported by the Radical Right, now administer many states' elections. This report, by no means comprehensive, provides a brief overview of various suppression techniques so that citizens, community activists and the news media can recognize similar attempts as patterns of voter suppression emerge across the country

Examining the Effects of Perceptions of Voter Suppression and Voter Fraud on Support for Voter Identification Laws in the United States

Democracy is fundamentally grounded in the people's right to vote, but what happens when the same mechanisms meant to protect the electoral process become barriers? This study examined the relationship between perceptions of voter suppression and voter fraud and support for voter restrictions, such as requiring identification to vote. The study utilized data from the American National Election Studies 2020 Times Series Study, examining a sample of 5,264 voters. Results revealed that voter support for voter ID laws depends on their perceptions of voter integrity and suppression. The more confidence voters have in the integrity of elections and the more they believe in voter suppression, the less likely they are to support voter identification requirements. Other demographic factors are considered

The Impact Of Voter Suppression Laws On African American Participation In Florida And North Carolina From 1988 To 2012

A rich body of research presents conflicting accounts describing how contemporary voter suppression laws impact political participation. This study process traces the political development of North Carolina and Florida from 1988 to 2012 to assess four competing explanations of this process. This study compares three measures of participation that strongly support the discouraging voter hypothesis, which finds that voter suppression laws depress black participation. This study finds that state officials in Florida adopted a much stricter voter suppression regime than those in North Carolina for the period under study. As a result, the two states developed differing levels of democratization. In North Carolina, longstanding racial disparities in participation were mitigated by 2012. However, during this same period, black participation in Florida was suppressed. Despite high levels of African American mobilization for recent elections, this study finds that voter suppression negatively impacted participation

Challenges to Fair Elections 7: Voter Intimidation and Vote Suppression

Political candidates win elections by generating more votes than their opponents. A vigorous and superior get-out-the-vote campaign is commonly understood to be the key to success. A less recognized but all too familiar alternative tactic is to intimidate their opponent's supporters and suppress their votes. Voter intimidation and vote suppression campaigns are often mounted in communities of color, where voter participation is more tenuous. Few states have enacted clear and effective prohibitions against these abuses

Black Women and Voter Suppression

Black women who are eligible to vote do so at consistently high rates during elections in the United States. For thousands of Black women, however, racism, sexism, and criminal convictions intersect to require them to navigate a maze of laws and policies that keep them from voting. With the alarming rate of convictions and incarceration of Black women, criminal law intersects with civil rights to bar their involvement in the electoral process. This voting ban is known as felony disenfranchisement, but it amounts to voter suppression. By reconceptualizing voter suppression based on criminal convictions through the experiences of Black women’s access to their voting rights, this Article adds a new perspective to the rich scholarship analyzing voting rights. This Article examines the history of Black women’s exclusion from the ballot box in the United States, including how the racist legacy of Jim Crow and Jane Crow continue through mass incarceration and voter suppression schemes. Using Florida’s disenfranchisement maze as a case study, this Article shows that while Black women and other advocates have led attempts to abolish voter suppression schemes, permanently, they have yet to succeed through the judicial, executive, or legislative branches. The ostensible reasons for these voter suppression schemes vary, but the outcome has been the devaluation of the interests of Black women and their communities while preserving the voting priorities of white communities. This Article concludes by demanding that individuals, including voters and members of all branches of the government, recognize Black women’s voting rights and work to dismantle these voter suppression schemes. Until then, society will continue to bar Black women from the ballot box disproportionately and disregard the justice and democratic values the United States claims to hold dear

Undefeated - Blocked, We Didn\u27t Count Your Vote Exhibit panel

Undefeated - Blocked, We Didn\u27t Count Your Vote poster. Voter suppression methods including racial gerrymandering, ex-felon disenfranchisement, student voting residency restrictions, voter registration restrictions, complicated absentee ballot requirements, early voting cuts, complicated mail in ballot process, strict voter photo is laws and lack of access to poling sites are depicte

Tiered Personhood and the Excluded Voter

The modern discourse critiquing vote denial policies in the United States has taken two distinct paths. The first and more recent path has been to critique the effects of legislation like voter identification laws, narrowed early voting opportunities, and similar enactments to hyper-regulate the voting process, effecting, as some argue, the ability for the poor, the elderly, and minorities to vote. The second strain of this voter suppression discourse relates to the express exclusion of persons who have been convicted of felonies from the exercise of the franchise. While both vote denial by effect or by express disenfranchisement have raised numerous civil rights concerns, few scholars have treated these issues in tandem or examined the ideological interconnections between these doctrinally distinct voter suppression doctrines. This essay will use the lens of “tiered personhood” to conceptualize the dual aspects of the voter denial problem as a unified phenomenon of political subordination intended to exclude certain persons from the political community. This essay argues that this voter suppression dynamic creates statuses as between persons based upon the ability to exercise complete or less than complete constitutional rights driven by an ideology of exclusion of those deemed “un-worthy” of full membership in the political community, thus excluding those persons from full citizenship. With the problem framed in this way, the essay will briefly use this lens to analyze the disparate treatment of convicted felons and the disparate impact of voter suppression legislation as parallel mechanisms that serve the same end—the maintenance of an American political underclass. The essay will then propose a sketch of a new model for subverting this underclass dynamic—a communitarian re-conception of American political community based on a premise of inclusion within that community rather than a dynamic of exclusion

Carceral Socialization as Voter Suppression

In an era of mass incarceration, many people are socialized through interactions with the carceral state. These interactions are powerful learning experiences, and by design, they are contrary to democratic citizenship. Citizenship is about belonging to a community of equals, being entitled to mutual respect and concern. Criminal punishment deliberately harms, subordinates, and stigmatizes. Encounters with the carceral system are powerful experiences of anti-democratic socialization, and they impact peoples’ sense of citizenship and trust in government. Accordingly, a large body of social science research shows that eligible voters who have carceral contact are significantly less likely to vote or to participate in politics. Hence, the carceral system’s impact on political participation goes well beyond those who are formally disenfranchised due to convictions. It also suppresses participation among the millions of legally eligible voters who have not been formally disenfranchised—people who have had more fleeting encounters with law enforcement or vicarious interactions with the carceral system. This Article considers the implications of these findings from the perspective of voting rights law and the constitutional values underlying it. In a moment when voting rights are under siege, voting rights advocates are in a heated discussion about how our federal and state constitutions protect ideals of democratic citizenship and political equality. This discussion has largely (and for good reason) focused on how the law should address what I call “de jure” suppression: tangible election laws and policies that impose legal barriers to voting, or dilute voting power. Eliminating these formal barriers to voting is vital. But, I argue, fully realizing the constitutional values underlying voting rights will also require also addressing what I call “de facto” suppression, or suppression through socialization. This occurs not through formal legal restrictions on voting, but when state institutions like the carceral system systematically socialize citizens in a manner that is incompatible with democratic citizenship. I show how de facto suppression threatens the constitutional interests protected by the right to vote just like de jure suppression does. In short, by systematically socializing people in a manner that is fundamentally incompatible with democratic citizenship, the state can effectively strip a citizen of much of the instrumental and intrinsic value conferred by the right to vote. Those who are concerned about advancing and protecting voting rights should understand the carceral system’s anti-democratic socialization as a form of political suppression—one that should warrant constitutional scrutiny for the same reasons that de jure suppression should warrant scrutiny