Voter Suppression was Instrumental in Shaping the Election’s Outcome
A popular sentiment peppered throughout the latter half of the 2016 elections by now President-elect Donald Trump was that the results were going to be “rigged” by political insiders in favor of Hillary Clinton.
Each time these claims were presented, they were heavily refuted by pundits. After all, according to statistics, voter fraud is a rare occurrence. But as the votes were tallied and Trump emerged victorious, one simple fact was made clear: a large bloc of the American voting public was held back from the polls.
And its’ suppression had a strong effect on the election.
To understand this in better detail, we need to go back a couple years. In 2013, the Supreme Court voted 5–4 to gut key parts of the Voting Rights Act. Almost immediately, Republicans pounced on this opportunity to block minorities’ ability and access to vote. The effect it had in this election was immense. This suppression lowered expected turnout from Democratic-leaning demographics, giving Trump a notable edge in swing-states.
Voter suppression was especially strong in North Carolina, a state that went for Barack Obama in 2008 and showed steady signs of inching towards turning blue in future elections.
From the NY Times’ editorial last month:
Republican lawmakers and officials have gone to remarkable lengths to drive down turnout among black voters, who disproportionately favor Democrats. Among other things, they cut early voting hours and Sunday voting, and closed polling places in minority communities, despite significant public opposition.
Even after a federal appeals court struck down the state’s outrageous voter-suppression law in July, saying that it targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision,” officials were scheming to work around it. On Monday, the state’s Republican Party issued a news release boasting that cutbacks in early voting hours reduced black turnout by 8.5 percent below 2012 levels, even as the number of white early voters increased by 22.5 percent.
So yes, Donald, the elections were, in a sense, rigged. A large sum of Americans were denied their Constitutionally-granted right to vote, largely thanks to the gutted Voting Rights Act, and the effect it had on this election is indefensible.
It is imperative that voting rights are restored to all communities in the country, but considering the people Trump has nominated to serve in his cabinet, it does not look like things are going to change anytime soon.
