In-person voter fraud — in which you impersonate someone or try to vote more than once, or at all if you are ineligible — is almost entirely nonexistent in the United States. (An exhaustive Loyola Law School study could find only 31 “credible allegations of fraud” in a one-billion-vote sample).
From "A Dream Undone," appearing in the New York Times Magazine.
Jim Rutenberg, chief political correspondent for the
New York Times Magazine, has written a
tour de force, laying out in painstaking--and painful--detail exactly how the Republican Party succeeded in their war to deny people of color in this country the right to vote. It is a war that continues unrelenting to this day, waged by white Republican state legislators with the assistance of a conservative majority on the United States Supreme Court, and it shows no sign of abating. More than anything else it demonstrates why the next President
must be a Democrat and must replace these Supreme reactionaries before their cynical and contrived "judicial philosophy" robs more citizens of their rights than it already has.
In the article, the first of a series on voter disenfranchisement, Rutenberg names the key individuals involved in rolling back voting rights for black Americans, including, in particular, the current Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts, whose ideology and persistence, masked in a veneer of "state's rights," "colorblindness" and other noble-sounding euphemisms for racism, provided the legal and political ammunition for the Republican Party's efforts. Roberts authored the Court's majority opinion in the 2013 decision of Shelby County v Holder, effectively gutting the heart of the Act.
While their actions have impacted millions, the roster of those actually responsible for this massive and distinctly Un-American effort is relatively narrow. As Rutenberg states:
It involves a largely Republican countermovement of ideologues and partisan operatives who, from the moment the Voting Rights Act became law, methodically set out to undercut or dismantle its most important requirements.
Rutenberg traces the history of black disenfranchisement from the end of the Civil War through Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era, from the time the 15th Amendment permitted Congress to enforce the voting rights afforded to African-Americans and the reaction it provoked among the wealthy plantation owners who found themselves suddenly having to cope with a voting population and voting districts made up of the folks they used to whip and enslave. The favored method of opposition to black enfranchisement during this time frame was violence, administered by the KKK and like-minded groups, who terrorized the newly-freed slaves and fought the Federal government's efforts at Reconstruction to a standstill. Afterwards, a period of "deconstruction" ensued which gave rise to literacy tests, poll taxes, and other measures to keep African Americans from voting. While blacks were legally permitted the right to vote, as a practical matter, following Reconstruction, they were kept from doing so by institutionalized racial bars designed to make voting as difficult as possible.
This was the status quo in the Southern United States throughout the 20th century until modern technology began beaming Southern racism into American living rooms, until the rise of the Civil Rights movement and Supreme Court decisions like Brown v Board of Education showed the rest of the country how separate and unequal black lives really were. The Justice Department began pursuing civil rights litigation and eventually Congress in 1964 responded with the Civil Rights Act which ended legal segregation, at least in theory. However voting restrictions meant to deter African-Americans remained largely intact until August 1965:
What changed this state of affairs was the passage, 50 years ago this month, of the Voting Rights Act. Signed on Aug. 6, 1965, it was meant to correct “a clear and simple wrong,” Lyndon Johnson said. “Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote.” It eliminated literacy tests and other Jim Crow tactics, and — in a key provision called Section 5 — required North Carolina and six other states with histories of black disenfranchisement to submit any future change in statewide voting law, no matter how small, for approval by federal authorities in Washington. No longer would the states be able to invent clever new ways to suppress the vote.
Black registration soared 63% in the first three years after passage of the Act. In Mississippi alone, black registration jumped from 7% to 53% in three years. And the trend continued, with ballot measures like those to permit registration at the DMV (the "Motor Voter" law), provisions permitting early voting, mail-in voting, and same-day registration. The rise in black voting, particularly across the South and enforced by the Voting Rights Act, prompted a tectonic shift in American politics as racist whites, formerly making up a solid bloc of Democratic voters, rebelled against increasing black political power. As a result, slowly at first but then in increasing numbers, they switched their allegiance to the Republican Party. Rutenberg cites the rise of Jesse Helms, who openly called blacks racially inferior, and Nixon's "Southern strategy," which sought to divide conservative from Progressive Southern Democrats, as creating the racial fault lines by political party we continue to experience today. The modern Republican Party in the South--and a large segment of what we now call the "Tea Party"-- are essentially the racist progeny and heirs (in modern, tech-savvy garb) of Jesse Helms.
John Roberts was by all accounts a brilliant law student, graduating with high honors from Harvard Law and finding an immediate and prestigious position as law clerk to then-Associate Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. Rehnquist has also been described by admirers as "brilliant." Some examples of his brilliance were highlighted when Ronald Reagan nominated him for the role of Chief Justice, in 1986. From the 1986 New York Times:
PHOENIX, July 31— A Phoenix man asserted charged today that he saw William H. Rehnquist take part in a ''shoving match'' in 1964 at a polling place in a predominantly black neighborhood of Phoenix.
The man, Quincy Hopper, 53 years old, also corroborated assertions by other Phoenix blacks that Mr. Rehnquist harassed members of minority groups who were seeking to vote that Election Day at the Bethune Precinct.
* * *
''He wanted to challenge the voters,'' Mr. Hopper said, referring to William Rehnquist. ''He had two cards in his hand. One was the state Constitution and the other was the U.S. Constitution. And if he thought you were down and out, and illiterate, he would challenge that vote.''
Mr, Hopper wasn't alone in his recollection of Chief Justice Rehnquist as a racist bully.
Four other witnesses came forward calling him a liar after his nomination for Chief Justice was secured, with the highest dissenting votes then on record. But of course, by then it was too late. The United States Senate had elevated a man who cut his teeth trying to forcibly prevent Americans from voting to the highest Judicial position in the land.
Rehnquist’s chambers were a haven for aspiring young conservatives, “the closest place to the center of an emerging conservative legal movement,” writes Ari Berman in his new book about the voting rights movement, “Give Us the Ballot.” For years, Rehnquist had openly opposed the major legislative achievements of the civil rights era. When the justice was a young Supreme Court clerk himself, he wrote a memo agreeing with Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal” doctrine, which formed the bedrock legal justification for decades of segregation
Rehnquist's most important and lasting contribution to voter suppression arose in the context of redistricting. In a case called
Mobile v Bolden he introduced the idea that a violation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in a redistricting case had to be proved by showing an
intent to discriminate. As racists don't usually admit this intent outright, this novel legal doctrine, wholly in opposition to prior precedent (and the Justice Department's position) which looked to the
results rather than the intent, began to hold sway as the Court members, mainly appointed by Reagan and Bush, began to employ this interpretation of the Act.
Upon leaving the Rehnquist enclave, Roberts was appointed by Ronald Reagan to the post of assistant to the Attorney General, following his mentor's, Rehnquist's rationale in arguing against other, prevailing interpretations of the Act by other members of Reagan's own Justice Department. In doing so, Roberts created a persuasive, if insidious, new argument, that justice should be "colorblind." Of course, this noble-sounding contrivance conveniently ignored the fact that racism continued to be a driving force in American politics and society, and indeed that it remains the most vibrant force energizing the GOP today. Roberts' (and the other conservative members of the Court) betrayal of African-Americans in Shelby is particularly ironic, since the Republican-dominated Congress came to power largely in the wake of the Court's equally heinous Citizens' United decision, effectively sanctioning Billionaires the unfettered right to secretly buy our elections. Those Billionaires responded by putting in place a Congress whom Roberts well knew would be completely hostile to any renewal or reauthorization of Voting Rights for African-Americans or other racial minorities.
The results of Roberts' handiwork were visible and immediate:
Since then, however, the legal trend has abruptly reversed. In 2010, Republicans flipped control of 11 state legislatures and, raising the specter of voter fraud, began undoing much of the work of ... generations of state legislators. They rolled back early voting, eliminated same-day registration, disqualified ballots filed outside home precincts and created new demands for photo ID at polling places.
The article also describes the outsized role of Hans Von Spakovsky, hired by the Bush Justice Department to help craft legislation in response to the 2000 election fiasco. Spakovsky, a rabid critic of non-existent "voter fraud" rose quickly through the ranks of Justice, advising its Civil Rights Division that the Voting Rights Act should be interpreted as "race-neutral" as possible, either oblivious--or more likely, fully cognizant--that this interpretation ignored the entire purpose of the Act. Also fully involved with creating accusations of 'Voter Fraud" were right wing mouthpieces such as Fox News, spinning exaggerated stories about ACORN in the wake of Barack Obama's election. All of these combined to create an environment in which bought and paid for state legislators could legislate measures to deny or curtail the voting rights of (predominantly) African-Americans:
In 2011, Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin passed new voter-ID laws. The North Carolina General Assembly passed one that year as well but could not overcome a veto by Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat. In 2012, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia followed with their own. The laws were strikingly similar. “It’s really, really unheard-of, or really rare, to have states move en masse all of the sudden to pass photocopied laws all at once without a national crisis,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, which has kept careful track of the new laws. There had not been this many restrictive voting laws in the states, Waldman said, “since the Jim Crow era.”
The notion, put forth by Republicans, that existing law has somehow "evolved" since the Civil Rights era to recognize a more "colorblind" society is probably one of the most pernicious lies fostered by the Republican Party. The Rutenberg article shows how Judges like Rehnquist, and later Roberts, abetted by a Republican Party beholden to Nixon's Southern Strategy, can and did warp existing law to fit their ideology. To conclude that blinding oneself to racial disparity helps to promote a "colorblind" society is not too different than, for example, coming to the sudden, remarkable realization that corporations deserve the rights of flesh-and-blood citizens. Far from being immutable, the law is a vulnerable, malleable thing, and the Republican Party has spent decades identifying those most adept at twisting it to their ends.