Democracy is the very principle America was built upon, and yet it is constantly under siege. Recently widening party rifts have resulted in an increasing dependence on fighting dirty -- resorting to the unethical in order to gain and maintain political power. One of the most impactful of these measures is voter suppression, or the push to place bans and restrictions on voting eligibility and deprive citizens of the constitutional right to have a say in their government.
Our nation is built upon the assumption that it is run by the people, but what happens when this is not the case? Recent voter restrictions for the 2020 presidential election resulted in the loss of accessible voting for those targeted. Though overall voter turnout reached a new peak, racial disparities were prevalent; according to the Brennan Center 70.9% of eligible white voters participated in the election, whereas only 58.4% of nonwhite voters did the same. What caused this?
Surprisingly, this statistic is not far off from the trends of years past. Ever since the 2010s, when America’s first black president was elected for two consecutive terms, voter restriction campaigns have amped up a notch. Whitewashed White House history was put to an end, posing quite the threat to policymakers nationwide. ACLU states that these measures, put in place over twenty years and still continuing today, include “cuts to early voting, voter ID laws, and purges of voter rolls”. These policies are cleverly engineered to specifically target minorities: the young, the elderly, and the nonwhite.
As one could assume, countless changes have been made over the years, and policies of the past aren’t always policies of today. However, 2020 and 2021 saw a huge surge in voter suppression laws and restrictions, likely a move to counteract Democratic determination to keep Donald J. Trump out of office. A May report by the Brennan Center summarized the shocking numbers -- only five months into the school year “14 states enacted 22 new laws that restrict access to the vote”. The nation hasn’t seen such tallies since the first aggressive rise in these policies ten years ago.
Most of the recent policies are still in place as we speak, preventing those with smaller voices to speak out as they need. Not only does this go against our essential democratic need as Americans, it’s simply unethical and needlessly combative. All residents deserve a say in their government, just as all people deserve a say in their own lives.
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