Ways the USA Currently Suppresses Voters (Multi, Multi, Media!)
"Voter Apathy"is Victim Blaming for the Real Voter Fraud: Suppression
“If voting could change anything it would be made illegal!”
- Robert S Borden, The Voice of the People, The Sun, 1976
Chapters
The Fraud of Individualism
Ways the US Government is Currently Practicing Voter Suppression
Overthrow of Democratically Elected Foreign Governments
Colonies & Territories
Electoral College
Winner-Take-All / First Past the Post / Plurality
Felon/Convict Disenfranchisement
Campaign Finance
Primaries & Caucuses
Purging/Manipulating Voter Rolls, Bureaucratic Discounting
Voter Access: ID/Address Laws, Poverty/Ability Disenfranchisement
Gerrymandering
Insecure Voting Process
Age
Misinformation, Disinformation, & Intimidation
Individual Apathy
One Last Thing
The Fraud of Individualism
We often speak of low voter turnout as though it is an individual problem. If only more individuals knew and/or cared about their country, they would go to the polls more regularly. Even after the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, I myself have heard many friends lament that there were more votes for the role of American Idol than for the role of US president. If only more individuals cared… But this lament ignores three key things:
1) Anyone with a phone can vote for American Idol (no matter their age etc);
2) They can vote more than once; and above all (the reason for the first two):
3a) An entire industry drives (multiple) votes for American Idol, while
3b) An entire industry suppresses votes for US President.
This article focuses on that last one, 3b. I want to emphasize up front (and I will throughout as well), that the myriad ways the US sabotages organizing efforts is itself political suppression which affects voting. For the purposes of this article however, I am going to focus specifically on suppression within the electoral process. Some methods need more explanation or commentary, while others I rely more on other folk to explain. All this article is to say that what we call “Voter Apathy” is victim-blaming for the real Voter Fraud: Voter Suppression.
Sidebar: I find it extremely… telling… that “free speech warriors” often prioritize defending the rights of Nazis to speak in specific venues over, say, addressing the highest percentage of incarceration in world history, largely over nonviolent drug use, a far greater violation of free speech. The below This Is Hell interview is a good look at expanding our ideas of free speech:
Ways the US Government is Currently Practicing Voter Suppression
SUPPRESSION
Overthrow of Democratically Elected Foreign Governments
US Imperialism is the tactic most often left out of this conversation, allowing us to think the problem is much smaller than it is. Imperial overthrow suppresses the most votes, especially over time. The US just helped to overthrow the governments of Bolivia in 2019 (recently won back by the people!), Honduras in 2017, and attempted an overthrow in Venezuela, though none of these coups made it to any debates as of this writing. These are but two of the more recent, and publicly known, suppressions.
The US military budget is now greater than the next ten countries’ combined. Every country on Earth spends closer to Costa Rica’s $0 than the US’ budget of well over $700B. The US drops over 40,000 bombs on eight countries per year. (The US began bombing Niger since the video source was published.) The US has over 800 foreign military bases across the world, more than 96% of all foreign military bases. (All other countries’ foreign bases combined total about 30.) Ninety-eight percent of those killed by drones were not on the US’ official kill list. All are declared enemy combatants unless proven otherwise, post-mortem. If you believe that the US is doing this to spread democracy, I would ask you how these actions serve that.
Why do I bring up these statistics in reference to the US’ practice of voter suppression? Because while we and the media cry foul about Russia’s interference with US democracy, we largely ignore, even praise the US’ actions in other countries. Militarily overthrowing a government is a form of voter suppression, just as election interference through hacking or sabotage also are. I hope that is clear. But I pose another question:
What if Evo Morales, former president of Bolivia, had agreed to privatize its lithium reserves, profiting the US, for the sake of preventing an overthrow? Morales might still be president today. I argue the threat itself of overthrow is voter suppression, regardless of the threatened nation’s response. With those 800 bases in 80 countries across the world, the US ensures its military might is felt by every country on the planet, and that they think about it when governing their own people. And the more the US government makes use of this tactic, the more even simple negotiations seem like demands backed by threat of punishment.
Historically, of course, this kind of voter suppression includes founding the nation on the disenfranchisement of an estimated 100 million indigenous people and overthrowing several hundred governments. We continue to suppress their votes by violating every treaty we have ever negotiated with a Tribal Nation to this day. Suppression also includes the domestic imperialism of trafficking millions of Black people from Africa, having been kidnapped from countries where they had greater enfranchisement than being legal property. I am confounded by those who call the US the oldest living democracy, as though any definition of a democracy can include one that sanctions human trafficking as chattel slavery in its very constitution, as well as voter suppression by class and gender.
There are other ways that settler-colonialism and state-sanctioned human trafficking contribute to US voter suppression. I am organizing this article by tactics, however, so we will come back to those as they intersect with the method of suppression. But even the overthrow of the results of voting is also coming back to the US itself:
SOLUTION: End Imperialism, Pull Military Out of Foreign Nations, Pay Domestic & International Reparations, Fund Foreign Grassroots Movements for Democracy
SUPPRESSION
Colonies & Territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, Virgin Islands, et cetera)
To be clear, US Imperialism never ended, but is ongoing. Currently, 3.5 million people live in the 5+ US colonies that do not allow a vote for US president. (The US calls them “territories,” but I will use the term colony, which Dictionary.com defines as any people or territory separated from but subject to a ruling power.) The colonies are those five named in this section’s title, as well as what the US calls “US Minor Outlying Islands.” Notably, this not only disenfranchises those born and living there, but also US citizens born in the 50 states/DC who move to any of the 5+ colonies.
American Samoans are not even considered citizens, but “nationals,” which imposes on them greater immigration challenges (though they are the US military’s number one recruitment post). None of these colonies have senators, and only four have house representatives. Puerto Rico only has a “resident commissioner,” even though they are citizens. Importantly, none of these house reps or resident commissioners are allowed to actually cast a vote on any measure being discussed. They are allowed to speak, but not allowed any decision-making power.
A Note on DC: Washington, DC has been able to vote for US president since 1961. However, they do not have senators, and their house rep again cannot cast a vote on any measure.
SOLUTION: Free Colonies (but still allow them to vote: see below), and/or Full Statehood
SUPPRESSION
Electoral College
Gerrymandering has been garnering more public condemnation recently. So has the electoral college, in favor of the popular vote. What I find interesting is how few people make the connection: The Electoral College is itself a giant gerrymander. Its explicit purpose was to “crack” votes for human trafficking, so they would count more, and “pack” votes against human trafficking, so they would count less. It is important to make this point explicit: There is no “extra-enfranchising” someone without disenfranchising another. We are left with the legacy of that system, making some voters count less than others. I leave the rest to CGP Grey, who covers this extensively:
SOLUTION: Abolish the Electoral College for the Popular Vote. Alternatively, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact:
SUPPRESSION
Winner-Take-All / First Past the Post / Plurality
Voting, in its ideal form, seems pretty clear. Everyone casts a vote, and whoever gets the most votes is the one who wins. But the method that we use in the US, which we tend to equate with all systems of voting, is only one of many. The US method is called “Winner Take All,” “First Past the Post,” or Plurality. Ranked Choice is a popular alternative, but there are many methods with helpful advantages. This video explains just four of them, as well as Plurality and Ranked Choice:
As a method, the problem with Plurality is that it disenfranchises all “extra votes,” especially those who did not vote for the winner. This is all the more true when combined with the Electoral College, such that many people in “safe states” do not even bother to vote. If you have ever lamented the “two-party system,” Plurality is the thing that creates it, especially when combined with the Electoral College. Why would you vote for a third party if the winner you need to beat might take it all?
Other methods give some amount of voice to votes for the non-winner. This is especially important when considering degrees of appeal/disgust. I may be satisfied enough with Candidates A or B, but I would really love to have Candidate C, and absolutely cannot stand Candidate D. Plurality does not hold space for this nuance, and is the most likely to elect candidates who actively antagonize substantial portions of the populace.
Two other methods worth mentioning are Approval Methods and Cardinal/Range/Scoring Methods. CGP Grey explains the Approval Method in the video below, but Cardinal Methods ask voters to score candidates such that I might rank Candidates A or B with 50, Candidate C with 100, and Candidate D as 0. This allows for much more nuance in how strongly people approve or disapprove of a candidate.
Worth Noting: I have not heard any interest in alternative voting methods from those who defend the Electoral College as a protection against the tyranny of the majority. They tend to be more interested in further suppressing the votes that the Electoral College and other methods already suppress.
SOLUTION: Ranked Choice, or Other
SUPPRESSION
Felon/Convict Disenfranchisement
Throughout his campaign, Candidate Buttigieg ran on rhetoric condemning voter suppression: his Douglass Plan included a New Voting Rights Act ostensibly to increase voting access. And yet, at a town hall, Buttigieg told the nation that he opposes prisoners’ suffrage. The overwhelmingly White audience applauded this stance, as though a principled position. The one Black woman in the audience seemed less than enthused:
Arguments for prisoner suffrage are many, but I think will focus on this one:
I mourn that any person might not understand this, and I am especially enraged that candidates, elected representatives, and presidents oppose this. We might be tempted to think imprisoning the opposition is something other countries do, that surely the US would never, save in extreme circumstances of isolated incidents. In that case, I would ask why is it that we think the entire system of mass incarceration began? And I would let John Ehrlichman answer, counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Nixon, who probably does not understand why it is a big deal to explain something so obvious:
Of course, criminalization of marijuana began well before Nixon, arguably in 1930. Here, I am focusing on mass incarceration as voter suppression, which really got going in 1970. It began, and continues, specifically as a strategic effort to disenfranchise political opposition. That was its entire purpose, alongside the cheap prison labor.
More than 6 million people are not allowed to vote because of a a system specifically designed as racial and political control. Over two million humans are physically behind bars in the United States. Though some of them do officially have legal access to vote, many will not.
Incarceration is a system of political suppression even when prisoners do have the vote, of course. No matter their access to a ballot, when communities are targeted, raided, and imprisoned, they are still politically disenfranchised and prevented from organizing.
The 13th Amendment of the US Constitution is a human rights violation. It also happens to violate the Constitution itself. Condemning someone to forced labor for a crime is cruel and unusual punishment, prohibited by the 8th Amendment. I find this especially tragic considering the conversation around prison abolition not very long ago:
“…as recently as the mid-1970s, the most well-respected criminologists were predicting that the prison system would soon fade away. Prison did not deter crime significantly, many experts concluded. Those who had meaningful economic and social opportunities were unlikely to commit crimes regardless of the penalty, while those who went to prison were far more likely to commit crimes again in the future. The growing consensus among experts was perhaps best reflected by the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, which issued a recommendation in 1973 that “no new institutions for adults should be built and existing institutions for juveniles should be closed.” This recommendation was based on their finding that “the prison, the reformatory and the jail have achieved only a shocking record of failure. There is overwhelming evidence that these institutions create crime rather than prevent it.” ” — New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander (p7)
SOLUTION: Re-Enfranchise Felons, Allow Voting from Jail/Prison, Legalize Drugs, Purge Convictions, Exonerate Imprisoned, Pay Reparations to Those Convicted
SUPPRESSION
Campaign Finance: Corporate Lobbying/Corruption of Government (Donations as Bribery/Extortion), Citizens United (Corporations as People), & McCutcheon (Citizens United 2.0: Money as Speech), Ballot Entry Barriers (Pay to Play)
When money is considered speech, it means that those with more money have more speech. Granting legal personhood to Corporations makes their speech more powerful than it already is. Corporations and the über-wealthy can hire lobbyists, effectively enabling them to vote year-round. And in this country, those who raise more money are elected 80% of the time. This is just one reason that representatives are more invested in ruling-class interests than those of the working class. They are literally too busy fundraising to listen to their poor and working-class constituents.
There is a big asterisk with the 2016 Presidential election I want to emphasize. You can clearly see that the Clinton campaign well outspent Trump’s by a few hundred million dollars. So why did Trump win even though the bigger spender so reliably becomes president? While there are always other factors, it would be a mistake to understate the effect of the free publicity that virtually every media outlet gave to Trump. mediaQuant estimates this difference amounts to a comparative $1.5 billion donation in campaign coverage. The Tyndall Report notes that television networks showed more air time of Trump’s empty podium (before giving a speech), than any footage at all of Sanders. Even after Clinton was elected as the Democratic candidate, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC again showed Trump’s empty podium while Clinton gave a talk to a workers union in Las Vegas.
I emphasize all this because, while you may not know how important money is to a political campaign, the Right does. They have worked to chip away at all limits to financial influence. Citizens United vs FEC, the more famous case, essentially ruled that Corporations (which are not people) have the right to less regulated political speech than they did previously. Their case was bankrolled by powerful donors (note the year of the upshoot, 2008, compared to the year of the case, 2009).
But those donors did not stop there. Lesser known is McCutcheon vs FEC, sometimes called Citizens United 2.0, which ruled that an individual’s financial donations (which are not speech) may not be as limited as they were previously. For a more detailed analysis, check out the Majority Report’s Interview with Josh Orton, which explains how the concern of legalized bribery is actually lesser than that of legalized extortion. Regardless, start with these summaries:
And just in case you think Unions are the problem:
And all this is once we are already running. But the system is rigged well before that: It takes money to even begin. We are not automatically entered onto the ballot just because we announce our candidacy. We must a) garner a certain percentage of votes from previous elections, or b) pay the government. Even the Green and Libertarian presidential candidates are not automatically put onto every state’s ballot, and will not be unless they reach 5% of the nationwide votes. You may be thinking that does not bother you, because you do not want them “taking votes away” from your party anyway. Or you may think that if a candidate is not going to win, their campaign is pointless and should not be indulged in. And if your ideology is entirely about power, I have different arguments for you at another time.
To specifically address voter suppression, however, it should be clear that this policy favors people who have access to wealth (whether directly or through fundraising their networks), which is inherently anti-democratic. What more, the very presence of other candidates and campaigns changes the conversation. This is why the ruling classes try so hard to keep some ideas out of the debate. I think this can be seen from Sanders’ candidacies: while healthcare and immigration reform are two of the most resisted movements in the US, Sanders’ presence helped push Democrats to the point that every single one running for president pledged that their healthcare plans would cover undocumented immigrants:
One frustrating example of this suppression is what happened to the Gravel campaign. Mike Gravel served as a Senator of Alaska for more than ten years. He opposes war and the prison industrial complex, and supports universal pre-K and healthcare. Though he did not qualify as a major candidate in time for the first Democratic Primary Debate, he did qualify for the second debate. We could have had this guy on stage, forcing other candidates to debate his ideas.
So why have so few people even heard of him? Because the corporate media completely darked him out. The NY Times claimed to have interviewed every single Democratic candidate for president with the same set of questions; they never spoke with Gravel. He was never allowed to bring his ideas to the debate stage, and force other candidates to argue against his policy proposals.
So what? you may say. He could not demonstrate enough public interest by the time the debates got going, and was late to the party. It is not like there was another candidate who did not qualify for the first debate but then joined solely because he was able to buy his way into the race… you say, in words I put into your mouth to set you up for a fall:
SOLUTIONS: Banning Businesses from Political Contributions, Publicly Finance Elections, Democracy Vouchers (Giving every voter “campaign gift cards” to give to candidates of their choosing), Ban Pay-to-Play Ballot Entry (Leveling field & Relieving fundraising burden), Media Air Time Regulations, & Ranked Choice Voting (which will allow 3rd parties the possibility of garnering 5% of the popular vote)
SUPPRESSION
Filibuster
Most people know the Filibuster as “the thing where a Senator can talk forever to keep the Senate from voting on a thing.” This is during the debating of a bill, before the vote even takes place. Since 1975, the Senate can force-stop a Filibuster only if there are 60 votes to do so. Ostensibly, the Filibuster option gives a minority opinion a way protect itself from the famous “Tyranny of the Majority” everyone is always talking about. But under a system of already such extreme voter-suppression, when the minority opinion is one held by Capitalists and special interests, it only supports the Tyranny of the Minority we actually live under: the Dictatorship of Capital and the Bourgeosie.
SOLUTIONS: Abolish the Senate in the First Place; Abolish the Filibuster (Potentially by Allowing for Senators to Talk for X Time, and Allowing a Simple Majority to End a Senator’s Time After That
SUPPRESSION
Primaries & Caucuses
The videos linked here explain everything I can say on the subject, but for those of you who are not actually watching the footage I post here, here is the summary: Iowa and New Hampshire are the first states to hold their primaries/caucuses. New Hampshire even has a law that says their primary will be at least a week before any other state. The winner(s) of these primaries hold an outsized sway in the trajectory/momentum of the primary. Do not take my word for it; Iowa knows it. That is why they claimed the position by law. This already suppresses the vote of every person in the rest of the nation. But Iowa and New Hampshire are also two particularly White states compared to the rest of the country, so this particularly suppresses voters of color. Are you shocked?
Mind you, all the other methods of voter suppression still apply, except, weirdly, that some colonies are actually allowed to vote in a state’s primary, even though they cannot vote for president. What more, caucuses are particularly non-representative, as they require voters to be at a specific place at a specific, but not always known in advance, time. Anyone who has work, is sick, or any other reason to not make it to the particular location in space-time does not get to vote. Again, this is primarily poor and working-class folk of color. Beyond that, the primary system also has its own version of the Electoral College, with "delegates” instead of electors. This is where “superdelegates” come in, who are even freer than the run-of-the-mill delegates to vote for whomever they like.
SOLUTIONS: National Primary Day, Open Primaries, Applying General Voting Solutions to Primaries (Campaign Finance, Ranked Choice, etc)
SUPPRESSION
Purging/Manipulating Voter Rolls (Cross Check), Bureaucratic Discounting (Signature Standards, et cetera)
This issue of voter rolls has been seeing more attention lately. One recommendation I offer is the documentary Capturing the Flag, which covers four vote protectors in North Carolina during the 2016 election. At just one voting location, more than half the people who showed up to vote were denied the ability to vote. Their non-vote then goes on to count against them by those who blame the low turnout on apathy. Frustratingly, these numbers are not officially tracked across the country, and vote protectors are nowhere near numerous enough to cover the need.
If the rate of that one booth were constant across the country, then over 120 million people would have been turned away from voting in the 2016 election, roughly 40% of the population. If that were true, it would presumably be a much larger story. If not constant across the country, then I wonder which booths, which communities, are most targeted by purges…
Sidebar: Who can say at this point what makes a story stick? Nazis and Republican Oregon State Senators threatened, together, a showdown with state law enforcement over a vote on the state’s version of a Green New Deal. They protested until the Democrat State Senators backed down, and it barely garnered any national attention. So what do I know? (This, by the way, is yet more Voter Suppression.)
What more, many ballots are discarded after the votes are cast, on account of more bureaucratic rationale. This includes provisional ballots and ballots whose signatures were deemed suspicious. Greg Palast estimates this set of suppressions amounted to six million votes not being counted:
SOLUTION: Automatic Voter Registration, Secure Rolls, Do Not Trash Any Ballots
SUPPRESSION
Voter Access: ID/Address Laws, Poverty/Ability Disenfranchisement (Closed Voting Booths, Needing to work, Not being able to drive, Not accommodating needs, et cetera)
Election Day is not a National Holiday. Some states have much less leniency for early or mail-in voting. Some registration offices are sparse, far, and have hours that do not work for poor and working-class folk. Some counties do not accept PO Boxes, which particularly affect Native communities. Some voting locations are sparse and/or far, creating lines that working class folk cannot afford to wait in. Over 1600 voting locations have closed since the Voting Rights Act was gutted. And some voting locations do not have accommodations for disabled folk. Meanwhile, representatives themselves are illegally, regularly casting votes as their colleagues, itself suppressing the votes of their colleagues’ constituents:
SOLUTIONS: National Holiday, Re-Open/Open More Registration and Voting Locations, Automatically Mail Ballots by Default (as done in Colorado), Make Booths More Accessible
SUPPRESSION
Gerrymandering
This one has been discussed a lot by people with more infographics, which you kind of need for this. I will let them handle it:
SOLUTIONS: Gerrymander Math Tests, Create More/Smaller Districts
SUPPRESSION
Insecure Voting Process (Hacking, Discounting Ballots, et cetera)
I admit I will need to rely on video explainers here solely because it is above my pay grade. Some key points, however: Anyone can buy a voting maching online. Experts agree that voting machines are extremely hackable, within minutes, with various forms of sophistication to avoid detection. This can include biasing unclear forms toward a candidate or proposal, rather than just setting a predetermined count, as well as completely wiping votes and/or attacking the reporting. While the US does not have a national voting system to hack into, the Electoral College means a few targeted places can make the difference, and some states keep no paper records at all to cross-reference.
SOLUTIONS: Paper Ballots & Secure Tech
SUPPRESSION
Age
Age is a tricky one. While it is inarguable that an age-based cutoff disenfranchises those who are cut off, I do tend to agree that, say, infants might not be allowed in the voter booth. While I am firm in my belief that 18 is too old a cutoff, I do not know how to democratically come to an agreement on what or how to establish new boundaries. Choosing any age just moves the problem around, and creating a test of some kind… is dangerous territory. But many other nations allow voting at 16, a growing movement here in the US. And the fact remains, many politically informed minors, whose lives are most affected by politics, by virtue of their having more life to live, have no voice in our political system. In fact, because of the greater affect on them, there is decent argument for weighting the vote toward younger voters.
SOLUTION: Reduce the Voting Age (to at least 16)
SUPPRESSIONS
Misinformation, Disinformation, & Intimidation (Allegations of prosecution for legally voting, Threats to vote a particular way, et cetera)
Facebook has repeatedly overruled fact-checkers in favor of Fascist lies. Billions of dollars of ads on all platforms target communities of color with yet more Fascist lies. Communities of color are receiving robocalls that lie about voting/election information, meant to sound official.
Some are receiving emails telling them to vote for Trump or they will be harmed. The Republican party has placed fake ballot boxes in targeted neighborhoods. Racist, Fascist Trump has told his Racist, Fascist base to “watch” the polls. Thousands of armed, Racist Fascists have shown up to polls already. While “poll watching” is legal, voter intimidation is not.
SOLUTIONS: Ban Mis-/Disinformation Campaigns; Publicly Finance Fact Checkers; Expand Poll Watcher Efforts; Organize to Enfranchise Others; Volunteer as an Official Poll Watcher; Show Up to Vote in Community with Others
SUPPRESSION
Individual Apathy (as a Function of Suppression)
This one may seem strange at first, but it is an important point to me. To help make it, I ask this: Imagine a world where all the above methods of voter suppression are resolved. One person, one vote, for everyone in the country. You can regularly, meaningfully communicate with your immediate representative. There is no corporate corruption, et cetera, et cetera. In this representative utopia: How many people choose not to vote for lack of care?
This is something I want a lot of well-meaning liberal folk angry at non-voters to understand: This apathy is manufactured by coordinated, massively funded political project. There is a lot of money and labor going into all of the above methods of suppressing votes. For most of us, it would be far more meaningful to vote for our bosses than for the president. For many, especially those who live in non-swing states, or whose votes are among the millions that were not counted for any of a variety of reasons, they actually do happen to be correct that their vote makes no difference.
Please: Resist focusing your blame on individual voters, especially us Leftists. When the party decides to move Right to attempt to appeal to that group, they are telling Leftists they do not listen to them. Stop telling Leftists their apathy is harmful, and focus your attention instead on making our system something Leftists want to participate in. You can do this by participating in organizing, thereby getting involved in our struggles for the long haul, rather than just extracting demands every four years. (Your voices being much louder in the presidential races than in the midterms — which also says something). Stop fighting against us. Work with us, for the liberation of all.
SOLUTIONS: Prioritize All of the Above Solutions *First*; While Doing Those Things, Organize to Make Voting more Accessible; Registration Drives; And Finally: Vote
Please Note: The least important solution to voter suppression, in terms of impact, is any one person’s individual act of voting. Additionally, shaming is extremely ineffective at changing someone’s behavior. (Scroll to bottom of link for sources.) So if you are concerned about voter turnout, or political representation, or halting Fascism, as I am, please reflect on how your actions reflect the priorities of impact.
And remember: The Left wants more people in housing. The Right wants more people in cages.
One Last Thing
On the principle of Nothing About Us Without Us, and given how influential the US government is, I argue the whole world should be allowed to vote for US President. If that sounds absurd to you, it is not unprecedented. In fact, it sounded very not absurd to the US government, when they were trying to overthrow the sovereign government of Hawaii. They succeeded in the Colonial coup, in part by forcing the Hawaiian government to allow voting rights to US citizens living on the islands, even though they were not citizens of Hawaii:
