SCOTUS Decision Resulted in Widespread Voting Rights Abuse

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The 1965 Voting Rights Act has long been lauded for dealing a blow against oppression, but in recent years, it has come under assault. Part of that act was a preclearance clause that required 15 states, which had a history of discriminating against minority voters, to clear it with the Department of Justice before they made any changes to how votes were conducted. In 2013, the Supreme Court decided that the preclearance clause was unconstitutional.

Unfortunately, while it may seem unfair to require only those 15 states to get DOJ approval before changing voting systems, the alternative is a lot less fair. Since that ruling, local and state governments around the country have been passing many changes to their voting rules. These rules predominantly effect minority voters and seem to quite often serve simply to suppress votes. 

According to the Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, they received over 22,000 complaints about unfair voter laws before the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, which is 10 times the number received in 2012. It seems safe to assume that these complaints don’t represent everyone impacted by these laws.

Often pitched to prevent “voter fraud,” a vague term that describes a crime as yet extremely difficult to find, the laws and regulations make it harder to vote by requiring voters to provide information they don’t have, to vote in places they can’t get to, or any number of other issues designed to make voting more difficult—under the guise of preventing alleged voter fraud.

The NAACP and others organizations have found numerous cases where these laws disproportionately impact minority voters and have filed numerous lawsuits against them, but those lawsuits take time, and there hasn’t been a nationwide attempt to fix this problem at the federal level yet. It’s the kind of issue that comes up during elections, but is largely ignored otherwise, and hasn’t been something that federal legislators seem to be worried about.

However, voting rights abuse is something that should be taken seriously long after election season, both at the federal and state level.

Do you think voting rights abuse is going on? If so, what do you think can be done to prevent it? Please share your thoughts in the comments.