Learning from History & Fighting Voter Suppression
Jason Redmond/AFP
Through rose-colored glasses, the centennial of the 19th Amendment appears to be a cause for celebration. A gauge for progress and a symbol of the so-called “universal” franchise for all Americans. But amidst rampant attempts at voter suppression, it serves instead as a grim reminder of the unfinished work of fighting for voting rights.
2020 marks one hundred years since the landmark ratification of the 19th Amendment, which forbid denying voting rights on the basis of sex. But to truly understand its impact, we must first make the distinction between the apparent goals and gains of the women’s suffrage movement. On its surface, the Women’s Suffrage Movement of the early 20th century aimed to extend the franchise to the tens of millions of American women who didn’t yet have the right to vote. At the time, “America was not a democracy,” as Alice Paul, one of the movement’s foremost leaders stated. However, in the fight to raise the status of women while crafting America into a true democracy, the gains of the Women’s Suffrage Movement fell short: their hallmark piece of legislation, the 19th Amendment, only extended the franchise to white women. So, while 26 million adult female Americans were nominally granted to right to vote 100 years ago, the 19th Amendment was no universal cure. In fact, the extension of the franchise was still decades away for women of color in America, many of which had fought tirelessly for the passing of this Amendment.
Fortunately, the work to expand voting rights and guarantee a more equitable and inclusive voting system persisted after the passage of the 19th Amendment. Asian-American immigrant women were denied the right to vote for another three decades until the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which allowed them to gain citizenship. Native American women couldn’t vote until 1957 when remaining states eased restrictions on granting them citizenship. And Black women have only been able to vote since 1965 through the Voting Rights Act. Latinx women couldn’t even fully vote until 1975, when an extension of the Voting Rights Act expanded voting access to women who rely heavily on languages other than English. Let that sink in. Entire generations of women of color, many still alive today, have lived through eras of presidents, senators, judges, and other elected officials whose elections they had no voice in. So, don’t let this centennial anniversary let fool you into believing that the struggle for voting rights is simply an ancient memory, a remnant of history that doesn’t concern us today. It’s all too recent and all too real right now.
But the fight for voting rights didn’t stop after a majority of American women were finally granted the legal right to vote. That’s because, in the United States, having the legal right to vote does not equal accessibility to voting. It’s a little more complicated than that. One roadblock still remains, and it all comes down to a strategy known as voter suppression. From poll taxes to literacy tests, voter ID requirements to intimidation, false fraud claims to the disenfranchisement of the incarcerated, new methods of suppressing voting have been on the rise. Voter suppression refers to these backhanded tactics, and many more, which are employed to influence the results of an election by discouraging or preventing certain groups of people from voting or having their vote counted. These strategies have constantly undermined the legitimacy of voting rights in America by circumventing legal voting rights since even before the passage of the 19th Amendment.
Even one hundred years later, how close is America to a fair, universal voting rights mandate? Quite frankly, it’s farther away than you’d think. On the centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted some women the right to vote, over a million American women are still denied the franchise under state laws preventing individuals with criminal records from voting. Moreover, African American voters, especially those in Southern states, are facing increasingly brutal barriers in their attempts to vote. Yohuru Williams, an activist and professor of history at the University of St. Thomas, explained to ABC News that voter suppression has taken on “many forms in recent years, including voter suppression laws, felony disenfranchisement and also the purging of voter rolls.” “Many would argue today that it is still precarious for African Americans to be able to exercise the right to vote … because of some of the irregularities and political chicanery that still goes on at the polls” stated Williams. Unfortunately, none of this comes at much of a surprise. In fact, the National Organization for Women has reported that voter suppression disproportionately targets women, youth, and communities of color.
In addition, the dire circumstances of a worsening pandemic have only added opportunities for voter suppression. The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed the upcoming US General election to transition to being largely reliant on vote-by-mail, a system in which voters vote at home and mail their ballots to elections offices. This reliance on an already vulnerable US Postal Service to transport and sort ballots has made way for President Trump’s rebuke against the USPS. As he refuses to fund the Postal Service, millions of vulnerable Americans relying on vote-by-mail to have their voice heard are being left disenfranchised by mail delays. The culmination of these attempts at widespread disenfranchisement has led voter suppression to become the next biggest threat to America’s elections.
So what’s the big takeaway? For one, we cannot celebrate landmark legal changes, like the 19th Amendment, without acknowledging the work that still needs to be done following the incomplete fight for women’s voting rights. Similarly, we cannot allow such remembrances to deceive us into a false sense of security that blinds us from the atrocities of voter suppression that have occurred and are occurring & distract us from the ongoing fight to guarantee everyone a voice.