With mid-term elections barely three weeks away, a bitter partisan battle is being fought not just over the control of the Senate but also over voting rights of ordinary people. While the Republicans have increased their lead in key battleground states – Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana and North Carolina – U.S. Courts have been busy hearing cases about the constitutionality of voter ID laws. The Supreme Court’s and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent decisions in Wisconsin and Texas have made clear that rules are best not changed so close to an election because of the inevitable chaos that will result, but clearly indicating that this is only a temporary respite in the long litigation ahead for both sides.
For over a decade now, Republicans have tried to make stricter rules for voting and insisting that it will help to prevent fraud and perhaps even increase voter turnout. Instead, data shows that requiring ID cards have effectively deterred voters. A recent report from the Government Accountability Office found that in states like Kansas and Tennessee, voter turnout decreased by 2 percent to 3 percent as a result of the ID requirement. More recently, some states have made it more difficult for college students to vote in the state in which they are studying; while a state handgun license is acceptable at some polling stations, student ID cards, including those issued by state universities, and out-of-state driver’s licenses are not.
Voting rights advocates, however, have maintained that voter ID laws have kept eligible voters away by creating barriers that disproportionately impact African-Americans, Hispanics, and the poor, who are likely to vote Democratic. These groups often lack the resources or the information required to file for necessary document that would allow them to cast their vote. In a recent opinion, Federal District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ruled that SB 14, the strict voter ID law in Texas was unconstitutional on several grounds: it violated the Equal Protection Clause and the Voting Rights Act; it also violated the 24th Amendment that prohibited poll taxes by forcing voters to pay for identification documents. Within days, however, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed her ruling and required all voters to comply with the ID requirement in order to vote, a decision that could possibly affect about 600,000 Texans or about 4.5 percent of all registered voters.
Voting is a sacred right in the United States enshrined in the 15th Amendment of the Constitution, although not fully realized or enforced until the historic Voting Rights Act of 1964 which helped to push for minority voter registration, access to the ballot, and integration in the electoral process. However, Supreme Court decisions have steadily erased protections against racial discrimination in Americans’ right to vote. A ruling in 2013 by the Supreme Court found Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional: the formula that determines which states and localities must be precleared by the Justice Department or a federal court before any changes in voting laws – whether voting procedures or redrawing electoral districts – can go into effect. Citing that the 40-year old formula to be “obsolete statistics,” the majority opinion argued that the country was markedly different since the Voting Rights Act was passed and that it was up to Congress to remedy the problem by taking into account current conditions in states with a history of discrimination and creating a new formula for protections of their minority populations. By striking down Section 4, the Supreme Court was essentially making Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the preclearance requirement, unenforceable.
For Congress to create a new formula, as suggested by the Supreme Court in its 2013 ruling, that takes into account current barriers to voting as well as identifies subtle or overt patterns of discrimination is being overly optimistic in the current political climate of entrenched partisanship. The midterm elections in a few weeks may see a dramatic shift in the balance of power in Washington. If Democrats lose the Senate – polls place the probability of Republican victory between 71 percent and 96 percent – the possibility to pass legislation to once again protect vulnerable communities from discrimination in voting might become remote.
Shyama Venkateswar is Director of the Public Policy Program at Roosevelt House and Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College. In this capacity, she leads the Public Policy Program’s undergraduate curriculum, teaches the senior Capstone Seminar, co-manages faculty initiatives, works closely with city & state agencies for student internships, manages adjuncts, and directs a scholars program funded by the Jewish Foundation for Education of Women. She is a regular columnist for Roosevelt House’s website on a variety of national and global policy issues on conflict resolution, food security, women’s leadership, criminal justice reform, among others. She has almost twenty years of experience in research, policy and advocacy focusing on social justice issues, both in the U.S. and globally. Before coming to Hunter College, she worked at the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW), where she served as Director of Research & Programs, and helped provide the vision and strategic direction for the Council’s policy agenda on economic security for low-income women, diversity in higher education and the corporate arena, women’s leadership, and ending global violence against women. She is co-author of two NCRW reports, Caring for Our Nation’s Future; and The Challenge and the Charge: Strategies for Retaining and Advancing Women of Color in addition to numerous commentary and opinion pieces on poverty, job creation, peace-building, and immigrant rights published in The Miami Herald, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Asia Times, The Indian Express, and the Chicago Sun-Times. She has given Congressional briefings, and presented her research findings to academic, policy, advocacy and corporate audiences. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University and is a graduate of Smith College.