States Challenge Restrictive Voting Laws

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“Voter fraud” has become the new bogeyman of state legislatures around the country, which have moved with alarming speed to find ways to restrict voting, particularly in ways that harm people of color.

The moves came largely after the Supreme Court struck down a part of the voting Rights Act of 1965 which required certain states with a history of voter suppression from being able to change voting laws without the approval of the Department of Justice. It opened up a floodgate of changes.

But it seems that the issue of voter fraud is primarily a tool used by state legislatures to justify preventing people who won’t vote for them from having access to the polls. The laws include rules such as requiring a photo ID to vote, but not allowing voters without that ID to take an oath stating that they are eligible to vote. In Texas, the list of acceptable IDs includes gun licenses but not student IDs.

Other states require proof that voters were born in the United States or had immigration papers showing they were citizens, which violated existing laws preventing that kind of action.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, you’d have to check all the way back to the Jim Crow era to find more restrictive voting laws on the books.

A number of court cases around the country have struck down parts of those laws, widening access to the polls ahead of the general election in November. Most of these cases are being appealed, so it remains to be seen what the exact result will be.

The Supreme Court made a mistake in gutting the Voter Rights Act, but maybe this wave of recent legislation will remind the Justices, and everyone else, that the right to vote needs to be protected.