American Democracy and the Promise of Justice

Topic Four

Voter Suppression, Voter Disenfranchisement

"Voting has grown more complicated in many parts of the United States in recent years: 20 states require a photo ID, and an additional 14 require some form of identification. Even those who registered and voted in the past may find themselves having to re-register; nearly 16 million people were purged from voter rolls between 2014 and 2016, the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law found in a nationwide study released this summer."²⁶

Significant barriers and threats to equal voting rights still exist in the United States. Take, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted a key provision of the Act. (Shelby County is in Alabama, directly north of the 54-mile-long Selma-to-Montgomery March route.)

Shelby County is one of the states that with fell under the preclearance provision of the VRA because it had a history of enacting voting laws that took the right to vote away from minorities. In 2011, it sued then Attorney General Eric Holder, as a representative of the federal government, on the basis that preclearance as covered in Sections 4 and 5 of the VRA were unconstitutional. Over the next few years the case worked its way through the courts, and on February 27, 2013 Shelby County v. Holder made it to the Supreme Court. The case was set to determine if Sections 4 and 5 were in violation of the 10th Amendment and Article 4 of the Constitution, and to determine if the 2006 extension of preclearance was a step too far in upholding the 15th Amendment.²⁷

The five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents voted in Shelby County v. Holder to cripple sections 4 and 5 of the VRA. The four Democratic justices dissented. Taken together, sections 4 and 5 require that states and counties with long, established histories of race-based denial of voting rights wanted Justice Department (DOJ) agreement for any changes in their voter registration and balloting procedures.²⁸ This case has weakened the Voting Rights Act.  

The decision of Shelby County v. Holder states that additional federal oversights that were previously deemed necessary in states with histories of discriminatory voting practices were no longer needed, an assertion disputed by many citizens of those localities and by some members of the Court. In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, “Throwing out [federal oversight] when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”²⁹ In the years since Shelby, voter suppression persists in several forms: racial gerrymandering, photo ID laws, lack of access to registration, and felon disenfranchisement, to name just a few.

Voting on our local issues is so important as well. Education and information are influential antidotes to having power on the local level, getting to know our local politicians, and following in the footsteps of the suffrage movements. Having a sustained intellectual dialogue and building relationships are key to educational justice. Having hope and coming together in our time in history are key components to confronting some of the same issues as our founders.  We have a culture of entrenched white supremacy, economic injustice, and must fight for educational justice. As Dale Russakoff wrote about in The Prize, these are challenging times in public education, and we must continue to fight for justice in our schools.³⁰

Voter disenfranchisement is at an all-time high. Our political parties have become weak in many ways and Congress must compromise to pass bills and make deals. As stated in Ian Shapiro’s book The Wolf at the Door, weaker parties produce more alienation and anger.³¹

"Reducing the influence of big money in politics makes our elections fairer. Voters have the right to know who is raising money for which political candidates, how much money they are raising, and how that money is being spent. Our elections should be free from corruption and undue influence and should work so that everyday Americans can run for office, even if they aren't well connected to wealthy special interests.”³²

Jane Mayer, in her book Dark Money, writes about mega-rich families and how buying levels of political clout has been a theme in US history–she writes on the Koch brothers, The DeVos, and Rockefellers, who funded a huge number of political campaigns and projects. Her overall message is one of intense criticism of the systems and laws that allow so few men to have such a large amount of control over the economy and also makes it clear that she “does not stand behind the environmental damage caused by the Koch brothers and other billionaires.” ³³ Mayer makes it clear that she believes that the actions of the Koch brothers have led to the disillusionment that the American people have in their government and to the current political situation in the U.S. and worldwide.