Burning Walls, Building Bridges: Voter Disenfranchisement

I normally do these posts every other week, but with the news this past week of various voter disenfranchisement coming to light in places like North Dakota and Georgia, I thought I would do a "special edition." Or maybe it's more of an "emergency edition." With the election less than a month away, we all need to know as much as we can about voter disenfranchisement and what is has to do with racism in this country.

Changing the rules to ensure that only one group of people (white Republicans) can vote and remain in power, is the very literal definition of institutional racism. Add to this, when other white people choose not to fight against it, they are aiding in the maintaining of institutional racism. Sorry if that sound harsh or guilt-trippy, but it's the truth. Even if white people are good, kind people, they can and usually are, racist in the sense that they don't mind living in a racist system. It works for us. I don't have to worry about my vote being purged from the system. I'm a white Democrat voter in Seattle. We're all pretty much white Democrats here, so it's all good. But the entire nation isn't comprised like that. Much of the country is comprise of white Republicans, and as the discussion is ongoing since the Weepy McDrunkface Kavanaugh confirmation, Republicans seem to be fans of using cheating, bending the rules, or doing literally anything it takes to remain in power, while the Democrats are debating what level of "dirty" fighting we should engage in to combat it.

Maybe this is how I "fight dirty". I call out people on things I would normally hold myself back on. It's not polite to tell somebody they're racist or a bad person for trying to cheat the system to remain in power, right? I might hurt somebody's feelings, and they're probably generally a good person as long as you ignore the racism part. But compared to the cheater, is it really all that rude? Isn't it rude of me not to point it out? It's definitely helping to maintain a racist system not to...So, no more sitting back and thinking, wow that sucks, but what can I do? I might not be able to fix the country and make it more fair for everybody, but I can at least use my words to put together a blog post to express my fury over the situation.

I have two thoughts for how to combat voter disenfranchisement, but no way to enact them. First: I think all states should move to a mail-in ballot system like my state has. It makes it stupid easy to vote, and voting should be stupid easy to do. This of course is probably why some states don't want to do this. It makes it more difficult to find ways to disenfranchise voters when you don't have the chance to turn them away at the polling places and can see what color their skin is. Second: I think activists need to organize a system where we can donate money to give to people in places with ID laws. When a person would otherwise lose their ability to vote because they can't afford an ID or the time it takes to get it or the transportation to get to the DMV, then this organization would provide money to pay for it. And/or help arrange for transport for the person as well. If we have to play the cheaters' game while we work on legal means to undo their unethical laws, then I think we should. If anybody out there knows how to make this happen, please do so!

I don't really know how to make the voting system more fair for everybody. I don't know how to make people care about others enough to get them to do the right thing. All I can do is help amplify people who have studied this more than I have or have been victimized by it. So that's what I'm going to do today. I am going to put links to articles that explain all of this better than I can.

Article 1
This ACLU article from last month gives information on the disenfranchisement in Georgia that we heard so much about this past week. Read about the tactics the state is using to "follow" the rules while working to maximize the people disenfranchised.

Article 2
A two-year old article from The Root explains various forms of voter suppression and how to combat them. Sadly, the article is still completely relevant today.

Article 3
Here's an article from July of this year with even more ideas on how to fight voter suppression.

Article 4
Here's one from the Washington Post in 2014 with ideas on how to reduce voter fraud while increasing voter participation as well. I'm not sure I agree with the premise of this article and I think it comes from a very white-privileged place, but there are some good ideas in it, regardless. Just go into it knowing it's coming from a privileged place.

Article 5
This has good information for people who have been disenfranchised to be able to vote next month. If you or somebody you know is dealing with this, please share this information with them.

Article 6
This is a very old article, but it's still relevant today. Disenfranchisement of felons in this country might not be racially-motivated in a technical sense, but the people convicted of felonies in this country is definitely racially-motivated. It's time to change the rules.

Article 7
Another article about felony disenfranchisement from May of this year. There are some very compelling reasons listed as to why we should reconsider this practice and reinstate these people's right to vote.

I think one thing that's important to remember is that since there are so many people who will be unable to vote in this next election, those of us who have not been disenfranchised have an obligation to exercise our right to vote. Vote for the people who aren't allowed to. Vote so that the right people can be elected who will do something about this. And we continue to protest and speak out and talk about it. We demand that our elected officials care enough to do something about it. We expect our elected officials to create laws to protect voters and if they refuse, then they no longer get our votes. We fight, however we can so that one day, we really can be a democracy in this country.