Georgia has about 3 million African American citizens, who are generally much more likely to vote for Democrats. In the past 12 presidential elections, the Democratic candidate has received an average of 87% of African Americans’ votes.
However, in November of 2018, the race for governor of Georgia was a very close race, with polls putting Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate, ahead of opponent Stacey Abrams, a Democrat who would have been the first black female governor of any U.S. state, by about 0.2 percent, or about 8,000 votes out of the approximately 3.9 million total votes.
In this case, Brian Kemp was also the Georgia Secretary of State, meaning that he is able to run the election and control voter registrations. He used this power in order to target black voters and help him win the election.
It all started with his infamous "exact-match" law. Enacted in 2017, it removes voters from the voter registration rolls if there is any discrepancy between their information on their voter registration and on government-issued identification. This means that even tiny issues, such as a missing hyphen or a nickname used on your registration.
The Washington Post found that, while Georgia had more people with exact matches than most states, 30% of voters failed to match exactly. This would put them at risk of being purged from voter rolls, even though an additional 23% of voters could be matched with great confidence and an additional 25% could be matched with at least 99% confidence.
In addition, the policy had already put 51,000 registrations on hold for the 2018 election, 80% of which belonged to African-Americans, Asians, or Hispanics, who make up under 40% of the state's population and are all more likely to vote for Democrats.
The exact-match policy that Kemp enacted is inherently racist against minority groups. Statistically, the groups with the most hyphenated names and names with suffixes are minorities due to cultural differences. Kemp knew exactly what would get black voters out of the polls in November, and used that to help skew the election.
Also, Kemp's office, since 2010, has purged the voter registrations of over 1.4 million voters, over half of which being since the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2017.
Furthermore, state and county officials have taken to various other tactics to suppress voters, such as closing voting locations and lowering the number of voting machines. This is also a strategy that, especially in recent years, have disproportionately affected black populations, such as in Randolph County, a county in the south's "Black Belt," known for slavery, cotton, and now especially, voter suppression.
Originally in Randolph County, there were nine polling locations for its population of 7,224 people, 61.4% of whom are African-American. Now, the local elections board had a vote on whether to close seven out of the nine, leaving just two in the middle of the county. This would especially affect the black and poor populations that live on the outskirts of the county and would struggle to find a means to get to the polling location.
Luckily, this county decided to keep the polling locations open.
This is not just a local problem, either. Over the whole state of Georgia, since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 in the case Shelby County v. Holder, 214 separate polling locations and precincts have closed.
Nationwide, in just the three years after the case, 868 polling locations in counties previously protected by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act were closed, according to a 2016 report done by the Leadership Conference Education Fund. A couple states, such as Indiana, had their number of polling locations reduced by more than 20%.
This removal of polling locations unfairly targets minorities. According to a study in American Political Science Review, changing the locations of polling places can also lower voter turnout, which generally hurts Democrats' chances during elections, according to both a Pew Research Center poll that showed that non-voters would have supported Obama in 2012 and a separate article from the American Political Science Review.
Decreasing polling locations can also increase line lengths for voting which, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, can dissuade people from voting and already affects more precincts with high minority populations. . Both of these tactics, when used strategically to target specific demographics, can skew the results of the election. As Abraham Rutchick, professor of psychology at CSU Northridge put it, "You can basically lessen the turnout of people who disagree with your position."
"This is not just an issue of fairness, but it could affect tight races. It could be the difference between someone winning or someone losing," says Nina Kohn, professor of law at Syracuse University. Essentially, these strategies, when used correctly and in the right places, can even change the results of an election.
Given the small margin in the results of the election, since the difference between Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams was only about 55,000 votes, which is a very plausible number for how many votes Abrams lost due to restricted voter registrations and discouraged voting due to reduced polling places and polling machines, which was a very prominent issue on election day.
No matter whether the election result was changed or not, this issue is a threat to the objectivity and independence of our democratic system and needs to fixed.
In the past, there have been elections where the margin was very close, and tactics taken like these could very easily change the result, such as the 1974 Senate election in New Hampshire that was decided by two votes, or even Al Gore's loss in Florida by 537 votes during the 2000 presidential election, which ultimately lost him the presidency.
Situations like these teach the necessity of high standards for our election in order to maintain the integrity of the elections.
In other areas of the country, however, we see a different technique taken by political parties looking to get ahead: gerrymandering. Most often, this takes to form of a strategy called "packing," where the political party in power in the state legislature (which usually draws the districts after each census) can create districts with overwhelming majorities for the other party and other districts which have smaller wins for their own party.
One place that the U.S. has seen this be a prominent problem is in North Carolina where, in the 2018 midterms, Republicans won at least 9 of the 13 congressional districts (NC-9 has not yet been decided; the election may have had "fraud or corruption" or "irregularities that may have changed the result of [the] election").
In North Carolina, NC-1, NC-4, and NC-12 are packed with Democrats, with each of the having a Cook PVI of D+17, D+17, and D+18, respectively, while the rest of the districts, all Republican districts, have an average PVI of R+9, just enough for all of them to consistently go to Republicans.
All of those three also seem to have racial gerrymandering, with Districts 1 and 12 being taken to the U.S. Supreme Court and being ruled as unconstitutional racial gerrymandering in early 2016. Just take a look at how the boundaries of NC-12 had been drawn to the right.
The people who redrew this district was able to create a district that's about half black with a bit over 360,000 African Americans in it.
The gerrymandering of the districts, while the extent to which it exists has been reduced, still takes great effect on the effects of elections. In the recent midterms in November of 2018, with their wins in at least 9 districts (or at least 69% of the state's districts, which will likely become 77%), only took just over half the popular vote with only 50%, compared to Democrat's 48%.
With North Carolina, under a perfect system, their 13 congressional districts would be split about evenly, with 6 or 7 Republican districts and 6 or 7 Democratic districts, based on their Cook PVI of R+3 and Trump's 3 point lead in the state.
Instead, they have halved the Democratic representation from their state. Based on their 10 Republican districts and 3 Democratic districts, you would guess that the Republicans won the popular vote by 50-60 points, with about 75% of the total popular vote throughout the state. Given the real results being that the Republicans won the popular vote by about 2 points with about 50% of the total popular vote in the 2016 presidential election and the 2018 midterms, the 26 point difference in these two numbers is unacceptable.
Most other states do not have a difference even close to this big. For example, Texas over-represents Republicans in their House districts by about 11 percentage points, Florida over-represents Republicans by about 1-2 percentage points, and Colorado over-represents Democrats by about 6-7 percentage points.
Now, this is not to say Democrats don't gerrymander districts. Just look at Illinois' 4th district:
This is a district in Chicago, which you may know, is a very Democratic area. In fact, all the surrounding districts are also democratic. So why was this district gerrymandered?
The answer is racial gerrymandering. This district is drawn in a way that is connects two majority-Hispanic areas and creates a congressional district that is about 72% Hispanic.
This is based off the idea that a racial/ethnic group should be led by someone of their own race/ethnicity, an idea which, I think, is also wrong and should not be tolerated. Districts should be drawn with diversity in mind to represent the diversity of an area, not to segregate races into their own districts.
Also, this district was drawn in 1991, so most of the people involved in that decision are likely gone.
No matter what, partisan and racial gerrymandering are unethical and a threat to democracy, and should be resolved.
In order to fix these issues with our electoral system, I propose three separate resolutions set under on voter reform initiative, in order to make our democracy work for everyone, instead of just the privileged in our society:
Maximum Populations Per Precinct
In most cases where there are issues such as long lines, sparse polling locations, etc., the problem is that the states are trying to put too many voters in one polling location. If we add more polling locations, we will lower line lengths and bring more people to the polls.
In Michigan, a regulation like this has already been implemented. They require that there be at least one precinct per 2,999 active registered voters and at least one voting machine per 300 registered voters at each precinct. The regulations also recommend at least one voting station per 80 active registered voters, but does not require it.
If we created laws like those in Michigan, that require a certain number of polling locations per voter, we could encourage voter turnout for those interested, thus protecting our democracy. Failing to do so, in my eyes, is voter suppression. Making it difficult enough to vote that it will deter some from doing so is against the ideals of democracy.
Automatic Voter Registration
The biggest problem plaguing our voting system is a lack of voter registration. According to a Pew Research Center poll, 24 million voter registrations are inaccurate or invalid and over 51 million eligible citizens are not registered to vote. These inaccuracies mean that most of these people cannot vote.
In addition, the same poll showed that many states use outdated, and thus expensive, technology for voter registrations. The state of Oregon's voter registration, for example, costs $4.11 per voter registration. That is a huge amount that could go to more productive things like infrastructure. In Canada, using more modern technology, it costs almost 12 times less, at 35 cents per registration.
Brennan Center for Justice backs this up as well, citing various statistics, such as Maricopa County in Arizona saving enough to pay eight full-time government employees in 2008 after implementing modernized voter registration.
In a separate poll from Pew Research Center in 2017, it found that about 54% of unregistered voters had found themselves not registering due to other circumstances, where they would be registered under an automatic voter registration system.
Given the easier access to voting and cheaper costs, states should implement automatic voter registration
Districts Redrawn by Independent Committee
This is one area where I think that California is doing a very good job and should be used as an exemplar for the rest of the states to follow.
In the 1980s, the Democrats controlled the state legislature and the governorship, and very strongly gerrymandered the congressional districts in their favor. However, after the 1990 census, newly elected Republican governor Pete Wilson would not sign the Democrats gerrymandered map, and thus it was sent to California's Supreme Court. The court drew the maps.
Soon after the 2000 census, California Republicans sent Democrats a clear message: if you continue to gerrymander districts, we will get the get the federal Justice Department involved. They agreed to maintain the status quo districting, but the districts stayed heavily gerrymandered.
In the mid-2000s, outraged by the extreme gerrymandering, Charles Munger Jr. a Stanford experimental physicist with an interest in politics, and California's governor Arnold Schwarzenegger teamed up to conquer partisan gerrymandering in California with a new proposal: an independent redistricting commission.
This originally passed the state through voters as Proposition 11, which covered the state legislature districts, but in 2010, Proposition 20 expanded its power to cover congressional districts as well.
The Commission works as a group of 5 Democrats, 5 Republicans, and 4 independents, for a total of 14 members. In order to confirm a planned map of districts, the committee needs 9 votes for, and at least 3 need to come from each group: 3 from Democrats, 3 from Republicans, and 3 from independents. The proposed map can also be taken to referendum for vote from the public, and if it fails to be passed, the California Supreme Court will choose a team to draw the new maps.
This commission has worked, too. Take a look at Rep. Grace Napolitano's district from before the independent redistricting:
It is heavily gerrymandered in order to separate the Hispanic population into its own district, and instead of creating geographic coherence in the congressional districts, it creates a district that looks a bit like an exotic type of noodle.
After the independent commission took over the redistricting in 2011, the Napolitano's district became a much more logical, compact representation of the area:
The problem, however, with this solution, is that more states don't embrace it. Currently, only California and neighboring Arizona embraced the use of independent commission to redraw district lines for the most recent census. Now, with recent propositions, some more have taken on independent commissions for the purpose of redistricting, but the majority still use their state legislature for that purpose
If we had an independent commission available to redistrict for each state, we could have more bipartisan, unbiased district lines, effectively ending most or all gerrymandering in places like Ohio and North Carolina, like how California has.
A more radical step we could take towards voter reform would be the abolition of the electoral college. There are numerous problems with our current electoral system, including these:
Disproportionate Voter Power
Because of the way the electoral college is set up to combine the number of senators and representatives, the smaller states have more electoral votes per person. News magazine The Week calculated which states "get screwed worst" by the Electoral College. They found that the voters in Florida, New York, California, Texas, and Pennsylvania have the least power, and the voters in Alaska, North Dakota, D.C., Vermont, and Wyoming have the most power.
Power of Few States
In addition, with the electoral college, the vast majority of people can have their votes overruled. If 50.1% of the population in the 11 most populous states voted for a candidate, and everybody else voted for someone else, the president would be able to win the presidency with just under a quarter of the popular vote.
Realistically, this won't happen, but it is still a scary thought.
Ultimately, voter reform is, in my eyes, one of the most pertinent and pressing issues that we face today, up there with climate change and universal health care.
To protect the sanctity of our democracy, get out there and vote. Vote for candidates who will support voter reform policies. And if you find you can't vote, put your story out there! People need to see how voter reform could improve voter turnout, save money, and realign our country with the values of democracy.
Pages Referenced:
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[2] - The Hill, "Poll: Abrams and Kemp tied in Georgia governor's race" - https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/414503-poll-abrams-and-kemp-tied-in-georgia-governors-race
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