At the Crossroads of Half Slave, Half Free
Something had gone horribly wrong. Most Americans knew it.1 When special counsel Robert Mueller indicted thirteen Russians for subverting the 2016 election, those suspicions were confirmed.2 The Kremlin’s agents, by “weaponizing” Twitter and Facebook and exploiting the racial fissures in America, had gone for the nation’s Achilles.3
Taking “extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists,” they opened up a series of social media accounts, and then, after “earning” their stripes as social justice warriors, began a campaign urging African Americans to boycott the election and just stay home.4 Using the Instagram account Woke Blacks, the Russians posted a message suggesting that African Americans’ disdain for Trump was simply manufactured by sinister influences trying to “forc[e] Blacks to vote Killary,” the pejorative social media name for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who was cast as “the lesser of two devils.” Faced with the distasteful choice between Trump, whom blacks were supposedly manipulated into loathing, and Clinton, who was Satan in a pantsuit, the disguised Russians used their robust social media presence to trumpet that “we’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL.”5
On Facebook, the Russians posted under the name Blacktivist, which they had used to elbow their way into a series of rallies in Buffalo, New York, that were demanding answers about the mysterious jailhouse death of a young African American woman, India Cummings. After muscling their way into the protests, the Russians began inflating their stature and profile using an internet bot farm that gave Blacktivist an even larger following than Black Lives Matter had. With their bona fides secured, the undercover Russians then began posting about the upcoming 2016 election. “They would say things like: ‘What have the Democrats done for you the last four years, the last 60 years’ ” and then, when the unspoken reply was “nothing,” the Russians in their best cyber-militancy mode would answer: “ ‘Show them your power by not showing up to vote.’ ” The message spread like a virulent toxin.6 One election expert observed that “Russians understood how important minority voters were to Hillary Clinton’s chances in this election. They were able to read the situation and say, ‘If we demobilize this community, it could have enough of an impact.’ ”7
The Kremlin’s agents didn’t stop there, however. While working to get African Americans to willingly “sit out” the election, the Russians were also focusing on increasing the pressure for stricter voter suppression techniques by “reporting” on rampant voter fraud in heavily contested minority districts.8 In North Carolina, where Republicans had issued strict voter ID laws and shown no mercy in targeting African Americans “with nearly surgical precision,” the Russians, using the Twitter handle @TEN_GOP, reported that an investigation was under way to uncover who had committed the latest round of voter fraud in the state, virtually waving a red cape in front of the charging Republican bull. Closer to Election Day, @TEN_GOP issued another tweet using the hashtag #VoterFraud and questioning the validity of tens of thousands of mail-in ballots for Hillary Clinton in Broward County, Florida, where more than half the population was Latino or black.9
As insidious as all this was, the Russians, frankly, were merely piggybacking on the years of work done by the GOP to stigmatize, disfranchise, and suppress the votes of African Americans and other minorities. The Republicans, as we’ve seen, have consistently claimed there is rampant voter fraud, especially in cities and states that have sizable minority communities. Thus, the suspicion thrown by the GOP on St. Louis and Miami-Dade County in the 2000 election is just as dastardly as the Russians conjuring up #VoterFraud in North Carolina and Broward County in 2016. Reverend William Barber best summarized the harsh parallel: “Voter suppression hacked our democracy long before any Russian agents meddled in America’s elections.”10
Obama’s election had been a catalyst for the most recent version of massive disfranchisement.11 And the resulting efforts to strip millions of citizens of their voting rights indicated how easily the electoral system could be manipulated. It was like a neon sign pointing “Enter Here.”12 After Obama surprisingly carried Indiana in 2008, the GOP-dominated state legislature and the governor identified the primary source of that supposed catastrophe: Marion County, home to Indianapolis and the lion’s share of African Americans in the state. The Republicans, therefore, passed a law—while Vice President Mike Pence was the governor—designed to prevent blacks from having that kind of influence at the ballot box ever again. The legislative device was simple: Counties with at least 325,000 residents could not have more than one early voting site unless there was unanimous agreement from the bipartisan county election board. Buried in that sanitized language was pure, uncut racial animus. Only three of the ninety-two counties in the state have populations that exceed that threshold—Marion (Indianapolis), Allen (Fort Wayne), and Lake (Gary), and, not surprisingly, 62 percent of the state’s African American population live in either Marion or Lake Counties.13 Meanwhile, smaller (and whiter) counties are not held to that same restriction. Therefore, suburban Hamilton County has had its number of early voting sites expanded to three and, as a result, has witnessed a 63 percent increase in early voting. The Indianapolis Star, which uncovered the GOP’s “methodical” and “relentless” attack on Democrats’ voting rights, found that “three other Republican-friendly counties also added early voting sites and have seen a similar increase in early voting.” Yet, because of the Republicans’ built-in veto on the Marion County election board, the state’s largest city, with nearly one million people, lost two of its early voting stations and has been reduced to a single site for each subsequent election since 2008. As a consequence, and as could be expected, early voting in Marion County plummeted by 26 percent.14
Republicans in Georgia have brought their own distinct twist to voter suppression. Secretary of State Brian Kemp has developed a pattern of going after and intimidating organizations that register minorities to vote. In 2012, when the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center (AALAC) realized that a number of its clients, who were newly naturalized citizens, were not on the voter rolls although they had been registered, its staff asked the secretary of state’s office why. After waiting and waiting and still receiving no response, AALAC issued an open letter expressing concern that the early voting period would close before they had an answer. Two days later, in a show of raw intimidation, Kemp launched an investigation questioning the methods the organization had used to register new voters. One of the group’s attorneys was “aghast …‘I’m not going to lie: I was shocked, I was scared.’ ” AALAC remained under this ominous cloud for more than two years before Kemp’s office finally concluded there was no wrongdoing.15
Kemp then went after the New Georgia Project when in 2014 the organization decided to whittle away at the bloc of 700,000 unregistered African American voters in the state and, in its initial run, registered nearly 130,000 mostly minority voters. Kemp didn’t applaud and see democracy in action. Instead, he exclaimed in a TV interview, “We’re just not going to put up with fraud.” Later, when talking with a group of fellow Republicans behind closed doors, he didn’t claim “fraud.” It was something much baser. “Democrats are working hard … registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines,” he warned. “If they can do that, they can win these elections in November.” Not surprisingly, within two months of that discussion, he “announced his criminal investigation into the New Georgia Project.” And, just as before, Kemp’s hunt for fraud dragged on and on with aspersions and allegations filling the airwaves and print media while no evidence of a crime could be found.16
Indiana and Georgia, unfortunately, are not outliers. Voter suppression has become far too commonplace. In 2017, “99 bills to limit access to the ballot have been introduced in 31 states … and more states have enacted new voting restrictions in 2017 than in 2016 and 2015 combined.”17 This means that more policymakers and politicians, as in Wisconsin, will be “giddy” about denying the constitutional right to vote to their citizens.18 More, as in North Carolina, will “celebrate” the precipitous drop in early voting by African Americans.19 More, as in New Hampshire, will lie about voter fraud in order to install a “poll tax” on college students and keep them from the ballot box.20
Yet, while there are far too many states that are eager to reduce “one person, one vote” to a meaningless phrase, others, such as Oregon, are determined to “make voting convenient” and “registration simple” because these “policies are good for civic engagement and voter participation.”21 In 2015, Oregon pioneered automatic voter registration (AVR). Citizens who “apply for or renew their driver’s license” at the DMV are automatically registered to vote unless they opt out. Under AVR, Oregon added 68,583 new voters in just six months. By the end of July 2016, the state’s “torrid pace” had swelled the rolls by 222,197 new voters. And equally impressive, its voter turnout rate in the 2016 election increased from 64 to 68 percent, “more than any other state” —but also the income, age, and racial diversity of the electorate was enhanced by AVR, as was the participation of first-time and sporadic voters.22
California took one look at its neighbor to the north and is “hard on Oregon’s heels.”23 Secretary of State Alex Padilla, dissatisfied with his own state’s abysmal 42 percent voter turnout rate, had been scouring the nation looking for best practices.24 “We want to serve as a contrast to what we see happening in other states, where they are making it more difficult to register or actually cast a ballot,” he said. California, thus, adopted and then adapted Oregon’s AVR program to include preregistration of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds who are then automatically registered to vote when they turn eighteen.25 Padilla also installed observers, including himself, in Colorado during the November 2014 election. There they saw the effectiveness of same-day registration, which could “boost turnout 7 to 14 percentage points” and “create … a fail-safe for people who missed the 15-day deadline and still want to vote.”26
These state initiatives to remove the barriers to the ballot box, including the use of mail-in ballots, which has had tremendous success in Colorado, are beginning to ricochet around the nation. To date, ten states have implemented AVR and “15 states have introduced automatic voter registration proposals in 2018.” Illinois and Rhode Island, in fact, have expanded the program to include other agencies beyond the DMV, such as those “serving people with disabilities” and social service agencies, that also have the capacity to electronically send verified files to election officials.27 That expansion beyond the DMV helps address the racial and economic disparities between those who drive and those who would have no reason whatsoever to have contact with the DMV. Most telling, given the political polarization of the moment, the bill in Illinois was bipartisan, as Republicans and Democrats “cooperat[ed] to make voter registration work better.” AVR provided electronically vetted records that will keep voter rolls up-to-date and “is expected to register more than a million voters” in the state.28
Democrats in Congress have also pushed for legislation to enact a federal AVR program, because the United States consistently ranks toward the bottom of developed democracies in terms of voter turnout. In July 2016, Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) cosponsored legislation that would take AVR nationwide. Leahy remarked, “There is no reason why every eligible citizen cannot have the option of automatic registration when they visit the DMV, sign up for healthcare or sign up for classes in college.”29 No reason at all, except not one Republican in Congress has stepped up to support the bill.
Yet, a key factor affecting the U.S.’s low ranking among developed democracies is the sheer magnitude of age-eligible adults who are not registered. Currently, seventy-seven million Americans aren’t on the voter rolls. To put this in perspective, there are so many unregistered voters in the United States that they exceed the total combined population of the largest one hundred cities in America—from New York City to Birmingham—by nearly sixteen million people.30
Moreover, the demographics of the unregistered have greatly affected elections and policies. Texas, for example, has two Republican U.S. senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, who have voted overwhelmingly (97 percent and 92.5 percent, respectively) to support Trump’s agenda regarding immigration, taxes, banking regulations that strip the requirement to report on discrimination in lending, and other policies.31 Yet, the senators’ voting profile is antithetical to the composition of Texas, where “Latinos make up about 39% of the state’s population.” Unfortunately, almost half of those who are eligible to vote are not registered, compared with “only 27% of white eligible voters.” Similarly, across the United States, “more than 42% of Latinos are not registered to vote.” Nor are 43% of Asians. And “nearly 31% of blacks are unregistered.” On the other hand, only 26 percent of eligible white voters are not registered.32 In short, an increasingly diverse America is poised to have an increasingly racially homogenous electorate, and voter suppression exacerbates the consequences. In 2016 and 2017, whites were the only racial group where the majority cast a ballot for Donald Trump and Roy Moore, two wholly unqualified candidates who paraded their white supremacist views in a suit and tie.33
Meanwhile, states and cities where the GOP does not have full control have continued to move forward.34 Delaware eliminated the requirement for absentee ballots to be notarized, thereby “expanding voting access for younger Delawareans attending school out of state.”35 New Mexico’s state senate passed legislation to demolish the barrier that required citizens who wanted to cast a ballot to be registered to vote at least twenty-eight days before an election. The new bill knocks more than three weeks off that requirement and allows voting-eligible residents to register three days prior to an election. One of the sponsoring senators explained the rationale for the legislation, which has yet to become law: “When more citizens participate in our democracy, our democracy is stronger.”36 Connecticut passed legislation providing for same-day registration and online voter registration. Miles Rapoport, its former secretary of state, observed, “While other states are busy restricting the vote with new voter ID requirements and barriers to community voter registration drives, Connecticut … [is] opening up new avenues to voter participation.” Again, the rationale was simple. “Democracy is at its best with active, engaged citizens,” he said.37 Similarly, although Minnesota has the highest voter turnout rate in the nation, the Democrats in the state senate were still not satisfied. Voting along straight party lines, they passed a bill to extend early voting to “15 days before an election, expand mail-in balloting to small communities and permit convicted felons to vote immediately after they are released from prison.” Republicans balked at the provisions, but it appears that their major resistance was “political … In 2012, Barack Obama carried 17 of the 20 states that had the highest voter turnout.”38
In 2016, just to the east of Minnesota, Wisconsin’s voter turnout dropped by more than sixty thousand. Two-thirds of that decline, by design, happened in Milwaukee. The Republican state leadership made it clear that it was willing to strangle into submission Democratic strongholds like the city that houses 70 percent of the state’s African American population. But now, the mayor and aldermen are fighting back. They have authorized funding to expand the number of early voting sites for Wisconsin’s largest city from three in 2016 to eight in 2018. Progressive civil society, such as One Wisconsin Institute, which has sued the state to end voter suppression, was fully behind the expansion. Executive director Scot Ross observed: “We know that when voters are given the opportunity to vote, that voters vote.”39 Similar efforts at expanding access to the franchise are occurring in Madison, Wisconsin; East Lansing, Michigan; New York City; St. Louis, Missouri; and Macon County, Illinois.40
Yet, for all these efforts, the work seems to be an “uphill climb.”41 The lie of voter fraud has embedded itself into the American imagination and has proved resistant to facts, studies, court cases, and reports proving otherwise.42 As the tentacles of the lie continue to sink deeper and deeper into our democracy, they threaten to choke the very life out of the body politic and, in the end, severely weaken the United States.43 Trevor Tejeda-Gervais, the Midwest organizing director for the nonpartisan group Common Cause, explained the nation’s current, dire predicament: “We are only as strong as the most suppressive state.”44
In short, we’re in trouble. Years of gerrymandering, requiring IDs that only certain people have, illegally purging citizens from the voter rolls, and starving minority precincts of resources to create untenable conditions at the polls have exposed our electoral jugular and made the United States vulnerable to Russian attacks on our democracy. Those assaults played out as seamlessly as if they had been made in the USA and not hatched in the bowels of the Kremlin. But it’s not just the Russian attack, as horrific as that is. Voter suppression has made the U.S. House of Representatives wholly unrepresentative.45 It has placed in the presidency a man who is anything but presidential.46 It has already reshaped the U.S. Supreme Court with the installation of Neil Gorsuch, and as a slew of Trump’s unqualified nominees to the federal bench get greenlighted by a compromised Senate, it threatens to undermine the judiciary for decades to come.47
Thus, when thirty-one states are vying to develop new and more ruthless ways to disfranchise their population, and when the others are searching desperately for ways to bring millions of citizens into the electorate, we have created a nation where democracy is simultaneously atrophying and growing—depending solely on where one lives. History makes clear, however, that this is simply not sustainable. It wasn’t sustainable in the antebellum era.48 It wasn’t sustainable when the poll tax and literacy test gave disproportionate power in Congress to Southern Democrats.49 And it’s certainly not sustainable now.50 Or, as Abraham Lincoln soberly observed, “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”51