Primaries, Voting Rights, and a History of Voter Suppression in America
From Democracy to Discrimination
Throughout American history our primary system has often been manipulated to keep certain people away from the ballot box. However, it didn’t start out that way. U.S. political parties introduced primaries in the mid 1800s, as a more inclusive system for party members to choose candidates to represent them in a local, state, or general election. Before primaries became popular, most candidates were selected at party conventions, caucuses, or in back-room deals. In this system, party members would meet together and vote for their preferred candidate without any input from the general public. Those outside of the political or social elite argued the system was unfair. Primary elections then became an essential way for working class white men to finally join the political process.
Though primaries were meant to make voting more democratic, they quickly became a tool for white supremacists. After the Civil War, Congress passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. These landmark changes ended slavery, defined citizenship, and granted all men the right to vote. During the next decade, from 1865 to 1875, black men enthusiastically ran to the polls to vote for the first time. Over two thousand African Americans were voted into local or state offices during this period. At the time, more than four million African Americans lived in the South — often in populations that dwarfed many white communities in the same area. Many white people feared that black voters would gain control of the government and upset the racial order by putting “the bottom rail on top.” Disgruntled white factions now did everything they could to exclude African Americans from the electoral process. One important method they used was installing “whites-only” primary elections. Passed at state and party levels, whites-only primaries prevented black men from voting in Democratic party primaries. And because political parties were defined as private organizations, they did not have to adhere to state and federal law. Discriminatory primaries were deemed perfectly constitutional.
By 1913 nearly all black men in the United States were incapable of voting. This practice of disenfranchisement happened not just through political primaries. Legal barriers like poll-taxes, and literacy tests, and illegal ones like voter intimidation and outright violence kept most African Americans away on election day. These were just some of racist policies and practices known as Jim Crow. As a result, southern Democrats had a stranglehold on southern politics at both the state and federal levels. It’s no wonder then that at all levels of government, this one-party system supported and protected these unconstitutional methods of voter suppression.
A Turning Point
Ten years later things began to change. Starting in the 1920s, African American activists, supported by the newly formed NAACP, filed several lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the whites-only primary system. In Nixon v. Condon (1932) the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Texas law preventing black people from voting in primaries was unconstitutional. Though the Texas legislature did remove the law from the books, the Texas Democratic party continued to prohibit African Americans from voting in primaries anyway. Finally in Smith v. Allwright (1944) the Court declared that all whites-only primaries were unconstitutional and, more importantly, that all elections — even political party primaries — were not private activities but constitutionally-protected state matters.
There is, however, an important difference between passing a law and enforcing it. While Smith V. Allwright was a landmark legal victory for voting rights, voter suppression continued in the South through the 1960s. This was not a question of law — the federal government had long before established that no one could be denied the right to vote based on their race. The problem was that these laws simply could not be adequately enforced. In 1964, with the ratification of the 24th Amendment, and in 1965, with the Voting Rights Act, many of these practices were finally, effectively stopped.
Because federal lawmakers worried that states would try to institute new voter suppression practices if they could, the 1965 Voting Rights Act required states with a history of voter suppression to seek federal approval before they make any changes to state voting laws. Though this mostly affected southern states, counties in Arizona, New York, and California were flagged as well. In 2013, Shelby County v. Holder overturned the requirement for states to gain federal approval. Since then, many states throughout the U.S. have passed new and more restrictive voting laws.
21st Century Voter Suppression
Since the Shelby County v. Holder decision, states have passed laws requiring voters to show a valid photo ID when they show up to vote. Currently, Illinois does not require voters to present an ID on election day — unless you failed to provide sufficient proof of your identity when you first registered to vote. You do have to provide documents that demonstrate your identity and residency in order to register to vote, but the state and local election authorities accept many different forms of identification for the voter registration process. Critics of these recent voter-ID laws argue that they are a new form of voter suppression, since the laws disproportionately affect African Americans and Latinos who tend to lack sufficient personal identification. While proponents of these voter-ID measures claim that the law is meant to prevent voter fraud and election tampering, there is currently no evidence to show that voter fraud is a widespread or frequent issue.
