A voter walks to a polling place to cast his ballot at a school in the Brooklyn borough of New York on November 3, 2020.David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
Debra Thompson is a columnist for the Globe and Mail.
Last week, I finally managed to mail in my application for an absentee ballot to vote in the U.S. election as a dual citizen living in Canada. At some point, local election officials in my old home state of Oregon (unfortunately, it’s far from a swing state) will confirm that I’m registered to vote and send me a blank absentee ballot, which I can then submit by fax, email, or mail.
Sounds easy, right? So why is voter turnout so difficult in the United States?
Amid the high-profile stakes of the 2020 election, there was a record turnout of eligible voters – by just 66%. Then, with the presidency no longer on the line, turnout for the 2022 midterm elections fell to 46%. In November, about 244 million American citizens are eligible to vote. The question is: Will they?
Beyond those who are apathetic or disenfranchised (including those who are incarcerated or have been convicted of a crime, with some reservationsin every state except Maine and Vermont), the basic fact is that voting in the United States has been made much less accessible by the institutional obstacles that Republicans have erected over the past decade, often under the guise of rooting out voter fraud.
The COVID-19 pandemic allowed more access vote by mail in many states during the last presidential election. In the years since, however, state governments have restrictions addedsuch as reducing the number of ballot drop boxes, introducing shorter deadlines to request absentee ballots, and limiting third-party ballot collection. In Georgia, for example, potential voters must include a copy of their photo ID to vote absentee, and in Montana, a ban on paid third-party ballot collection—which many Native Americans living on remote reservations rely on to vote—was passed into law, until it was overturned. unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court in March. Alabama even imposes sanctions for crimes to return someone else’s voting form – like, say, your elderly grandmother’s.
Time limitations and inconsistent rules across states play a key role in these restrictions. In 15 states, voters must register 28 to 30 days in advance. In Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Nevada and Utah, End of early voting the Friday before the election. Alabama, New Hampshire and Mississippi do not allow early in-person voting at all. In Mississippi, restrictions on mail-in voting mean that for most people, even Mail-in voting must be done in person. And in Indiana and Kentucky, Polling stations close at 6 p.m. on Election Day. These constraints disproportionately affect low-income people, people with disabilities and those with limited access to transportation.
Voters have also been intimidated by the threat of legal action. In Florida and Texas, there have been arrests of high-ranking figures People convicted of serious crimes for voting have been arrested, even though many of them were issued voter registration cards and thus believed they were eligible to vote. The chilling effect of these efforts, carried out by special “election police,” will encourage people who are perfectly eligible to vote to choose to avoid breaking these complicated rules. Election officials have also faced intimidation from Republican-controlled legislatures, with nearly a dozen states enacting criminal penalties that include potential prison time for election officials who, for example, fail to properly maintain voter rolls.
Oh, and then there’s the blatant gerrymandering has dilute the votes of communities of color, the near destruction of the voting rights law, Census undercounts urban centers that tend to vote Democratic, Errors in the purges of electoral listsand the very real possibility of another attempt to subvert the election results if former President Donald Trump loses again.
But it’s not all bad. Some states—particularly those controlled by Democrats or with balanced legislatures—have actually increase In recent years, access to voting has improved. Illinois made mail-in voting permanent; New Mexico created protections for polling places on tribal lands; and in Utah, a person can register and vote in person at a polling place on Election Day.
But the longer and more cumbersome the voting process, the less likely people are to exercise that right. Moreover, the difficulty of voting depends a lot on the state you live in. American federalism is lauded for allowing states to become “laboratories of democracy”, but in this case it exacerbates deep inequalities, catalyzing the potential for a new race to the bottom between states.
The right to vote is the cornerstone of democracy. While voting does not have to be convenient, it also does not have to be tedious and confusing. But unfortunately, in an era where a 66% turnout is touted as exceptional, the normalization of America’s democratic deficit is already underway.
