Tag: Voting Rights Act of 1965

Posted on

Addressing Racial Disparities in Polling Wait Times: A Needed Election Reform

Right now, all the talk about election reforms and voting rights at the national level and at some state levels seems to center around gerrymandering (manipulating the boundaries of an electoral district to favor a particular party or person), state voter ID laws (something which critics argue disenfranchises some people), and restoring voting rights for people with completed felony sentences, to name a few. These are big and important things to try and take on, as gerrymandering allows representatives to choose their constituents instead of the other way around, restrictive voter ID laws create a potential barrier to voting for some people,[1] and restoring voting for people with completed felony sentences seems only fitting for those who have already paid their debts to society.

Yet, there are several other severely needed election-related issues that aren’t being discussed enough, in my humble opinion, yet desperately need to be addressed in some form. One such issue I want to really focus on in this post is in reducing the racial disparity in wait times at the polls.

In the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential Election, it was found that residents of entirely Black neighborhoods took 29% longer to vote and were 74% more likely to wait at their polling place to vote for 30+ minutes than those from entirely white neighborhoods.[2] Numbers were also bad in the 2018 midterm elections, when Latinos waited 46% longer than white voters on average while Black voters waited 45% longer than white voters on average.[3] I haven’t seen any numbers for 2020, but I am guessing that 2020 might not be a fair year to look at for numbers due to how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the way so many Americans voted.

A fair bit of the blame for these disparities has often been given to a 2013 United States Supreme Court decision that decided to throw out key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The result of the decision was that several elements of federal oversight of election decisions in states with histories of discrimination, including decisions on closing down polling places, were removed. Subsequently, many of these states covered by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have closed down many polling places—something which has disproportionately affected Black voters in Georgia[4] as well as Black and Latino voters in Texas,[5] to name two.

While I have little doubt that the closing down of polling places in many communities of color post-2013 decision has played a factor, I think there is something more going on. I say that because wait times for voting in presidential elections in 2012 and 2008—in a time before the 2013 decision from the Supreme Court—also show racial disparities in terms of how long people waited at the polls,[6] leading me to think that while the 2013 decision is likely a problem, it’s not the only problem.

Another potential problem to consider is the number of resources allocated to various voting places; namely, poll workers and voting machines. Speaking of 2012, the states that had the longest lines in that year’s election (Florida, South Carolina, and Maryland) were marred by a shortage of machines, poll workers, or both—issues that happened in areas with high percentages of minority voters.[7] The fact that two of these states (Florida and Maryland) did not even have the “histories of discrimination” that made them subject to the Voting Rights Act also means that looking at voting from a racial injustice standpoint should not just be limited to those states and locations subjected to the Voting Rights Act.

A more politically progressive approach to this might be to advocate for voting rights legislation that could, if at all possible, hold accountable states which dole out fewer resources for voting to communities of color than to predominantly white communities, whether that be poll places or poll workers. I am not a legal expert so I don’t know the extent to which such a law is possible, especially given the fact that there is a lot of power in terms of the administering of elections that is in the hands of individual states. I am also not a legislative expert so I don’t know if the current voting rights legislation in Congress looks to address this specific issue. However, given the fact that the right to vote is a foundational right for an American citizen, it is certainly an issue that needs to be brought to the table at the federal level.

One thing that must be done, regardless of whether anything can legally be done at the federal level to address such issues, is that more advocacy needs to be done to pressure states into following their own election laws—laws that are often not followed. In the case of two of the states with the longest lines in 2012, for example (Maryland and South Carolina), the overwhelming majority of voting precincts did not comply with laws in place regarding resource allocations for polling places.[8] And then there are all the cases of laws on the size of voting precincts and polling places—laws often not followed,[9] much to the detriment of how long lines at the polls often are. I can’t help but wonder how many of the current racial disparities with polling wait times would be addressed if states were pressured into following their own election laws on everything from resource allocations to the sizes of polling precincts.

Regardless of the strategy for addressing the disparity in polling wait times, it cannot be denied that there are longstanding disparities in terms of how long people of different races need to vote. Figuring out how best to address this should be part of the larger election reform discussion.

[1] https://www.law.nyu.edu/news/BRENNAN_CENTER_VOTERID_STUDY

[2] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26487/w26487.pdf

[3] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/waiting-vote

[4] https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924527679/why-do-nonwhite-georgia-voters-have-to-wait-in-line-for-hours-too-few-polling-pl

[5] https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2020/07/13/racial-inequality-why-does-it-take-so-long-vote-Black-communities

[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/04/08/how-long-did-you-wait-to-vote-depends-on-your-race/

[7] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/election-day-long-lines-resource-allocation

[8] Ibid.

[9] https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924527679/why-do-nonwhite-georgia-voters-have-to-wait-in-line-for-hours-too-few-polling-pl

Posted on

The Fight for African American Civil Rights is Not Over

When my brother and I went through the educational system, we were taught that the big fight for African American civil rights was in the 1950s and 1960s…and then there was nothing on that fight after then.

That is somewhat understandable, because several of the most significant court decisions and pieces of legislation on African American civil rights in the history of the United States happened/passed in the 1950s and 1960s.

However, the fight for African American civil rights is far from over, and in fact, in a number of ways, the United States has seemingly gone backward on African American civil rights.

There is clearly a disconnect going on here, between what some people believe and what the reality is.

Below are three of the common[1] beliefs about African American civil rights that are incorrect. Those incorrect beliefs are in bold and the answers to those incorrect beliefs are in regular text:

  1. We have gone forward on voting rights in recent decades. Actually, the United States has gone backward on voting rights for African Americans. Several years ago, the United States Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since then, many hundreds of voting sites have closed down, an overwhelming majority of them being in African American communities.[2] Additionally, Voter ID laws have come into play in numerous states; these ID laws have disproportionately affected people of color.[3] If you think that voting rights for African Americans are going forward, think again.
  2. School segregation is in the past. It’s over. To the contrary, racial integration in schools has also gone backward. This Atlantic article goes into great detail about school segregation in the United States. But the TL; DR (short for too long; didn’t read) version is that school segregation is actually getting worse, and there seems to be relatively little political will to sufficiently address that fact. And that’s not just a problem in the American South—there was a whole feature story, also in The Atlantic, about how the new chancellor of the New York City schools has made desegregation of schools a major priority because segregation has become a problem in New York. The consequence is schools that are separate…and unequal.
  3. White people and people of color are treated equally under the law. That’s not true either; the criminal justice system still shows racial disparities. A study in 2017 showed that black men get 19.1% longer sentences than white men on average…for the same crimes![4] Innocent African Americans are much more likely to be wrongfully convicted than innocent people of other races—50% more likely for murder, 3 ½ times more likely for sexual assault, and a staggering 12 times more likely for drug crimes.[5] The disparities may not come as a surprise for many, but the magnitude of the disparities may catch some off-guard—while also demonstrating that the United States has a long way to go on criminal justice issues.

Some people may yet argue that the fight for African American civil rights is over, and that anyone who believes otherwise is somehow holding on to misplaced bitterness. However, during this Black History Month, I argue that actually, it’s far from over. To the contrary, we’re going backward, whether people realize it or not.

[1] Note that this list is not comprehensive. In order to keep this post relatively short, I narrowed it down to three key areas where the fight for African American civil rights is clearly not over.

[2] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2018/09/04/polling-places-remain-a-target-ahead-of-november-elections

[3] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2018/09/04/polling-places-remain-a-target-ahead-of-november-elections

[4] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/black-men-sentenced-time-white-men-crime-study/story?id=51203491

[5] http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race_and_Wrongful_Convictions.pdf

Posted on

LGBTQ+: Beyond Marriage

Given the fact that October is LGBT History Month, I think that it is both important and appropriate to dedicate a blog post during the month to the topic of LGBTQ+ issues.

In particular, I want to use this post as a warning against viewing LGBTQ+ history in the way that many of us view the civil rights movement for African Americans: ending with one or two major events.

In history classes, the African American civil rights movement is often taught as having ended decades ago, with legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This is the case, even though many civil rights problems still remain in 2017.

I fear that many of us in future generations will view the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement in a similar way: ending with one or two major events. The only difference is that instead of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act with African American civil rights, we have the allowance of same-sex marriage in all fifty states and the lifting of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” with LGBTQ+ rights.

The problem, however, is that there are many LGBTQ+ civil rights which should exist but don’t. Here are a few examples:

  1. Most states have no laws regarding discrimination in schools on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
  2. Most states do not prohibit housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
  3. Many states do not address hate crimes that are on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
  4. Most states do not prohibit discrimination at public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

I can add many other things to the list, but the point of having this list is to show that the LGBTQ+ rights movement should not be viewed as ending just because the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal. That was one step in the process for securing LGBTQ+ rights, but it is by no means the only step or the last step.

If people view the decision to legalize same-sex marriage as the last or only step in achieving LGBTQ+ civil rights, then issues such as the ones I mention above will continue to exist for decades to come. Hopefully, that won’t be the case.

Here is a map showing states and where they stand on a variety of LGBTQ+ issues—this map from the Human Rights Campaign: https://www.hrc.org/state-maps