Burdens of Voting in Modern America

There is no secret that the year 2020 has brought new challenges to daily life. Virtual classes are the new normal, zoom meetings fill afternoons, and trips to the grocery store are accompanied by masks and floor arrows telling you where you can walk. And in the middle of this global pandemic, the United States had a presidential election.

There were many efforts made to engage voters, especially if they couldn’t make it to the polls due to health concerns. Many states expanded their guidelines for mail-in ballots to include people who were social distancing. Despite this effort, voter suppression is still rampant in the United States.

At early voting sites, long wait times were rampant. Personally, I waited two hours and thirty minutes at my early voting location in New York. In states like Georgia, voters could expect to wait ten hours just to participate in their civic duty. According to a study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, black voters waited an average of 16 minutes in line to white voters 10 minutes in the 2016 general election. While some attributed long wait times to an increased engagement in the electoral process and excitement around the election, it is clear that long waits are a voter suppression tactic. Long queues disproportionately affect wage workers, who do not get paid time off to vote. Further, in states like Georgia, predominately black counties had fewer early voting and poll sites, making people travel further to vote and wait longer.

In 35 states, voters need to carry some sort of ID in order to vote. Advocates for voter IDs claim that they make voting easier by making cheating harder. However, poor, homeless, and disabled citizens are far less likely to have ID’s if they do not drive or have a permanent address. Voter ID laws primarily target minority groups, suppressing them from using their right to vote.

Roll purges are another attempt to limit the number of people who can vote. Since each local county and state has their own rules and regulations in regard to the election process, some regularly purge voters’ names from the list of registered voters if there is some irregularity with their name or address. This has led to many young, poor, and minority voters who may have unstable housing or complicated name spellings from being registered to vote.

With all the efforts being made to prevent people from easily casting their ballot, is the United States truly upholding its democratic values? I argue that a democracy is only as strong as its elections. Any attempt to suppress votes is an attempt to suppress democracy. Our government can only function effective when everyone participates and makes their voices heard. If we want to protect our democracy, we must fight against every voter suppression tactic.

This blog post was inspired by the article “US Election 2020: Why it Can Be Hard to Vote in the US” published by Robin Levinson-King for BBC News: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54240651