7 PERFECTLY LEGAL

WAYS TO COMMIT
VOTER SUPPRESSION

*used by celebrities like the US government

(pls don't put me on a watchlist)
 1.POLL TAXES

WHAT/WHEN/WHERE/WHY
A price that must be paid in order to vote. Appeared in 1890's
in order to prevent black people, a historically economically
disadvantaged group, from voting. Poor white people were often
'grandfathered' in, and enforcement was racially biased, so more
to exclude people of color (poc), a generally left leaning
demographic. Remained leagal until the 24th amendment in
1964. (1)

STILL RELEVANT?
While direct poll taxes are now illegal, groups like the ACLU
argue there are other fiscal barriers to voting, which
disproportionately affect minority and working class voters. The
following require some cost not all can afford (2):

Time off Transport/ Drivers Postage Priority Shipping

work to Fares to get License for mail-in so ballot
vote to polling station for ID ballots counted

SOLUTIONS
Make election day a federal holiday, increase early + absentee
voting for working class, allow no cost ballot mailing, fund the
USPS, pay someone's poll tax, diversify types of IDs accepted.

2
 2. VOTER LIST PURGES

WHAT?
Done carefully: the removal of duplicate names, the dead, and
other ineligible voters from state's voter roll to keep it up to date.
Done carelessly or deliberately incorrectly: the removal of
registered voters.

WHEN/WHERE/WHY?
Voting purges are done quite frequently, between 2004 and
2006, 39 states and DC reported purging more than 13 million
voters from registration rolls. The issue is that different states
have different means of editing their rolls, and ethic agencies,
like the Brennan Center for Justice state "the process is shrouded
in secrecy, prone to error, and vulnerable to manipulation" (3).

STILL RELEVANT?
Before the 2016 primary, NY election officials illegally removed
200,000 eligible voters, 2013 Virginia purges had a 17% error
rate, in 2017 Georgia removed 107,000 eligible voters
(disproportionately black). The Brennan Center reports voter
purges have increased in recent years, and may affect this years
results, as many are voting by mail and may not realize their
registration was revoked. (4)

SOLUTIONS
Check your registration status ASAP, and encourage others to
do the same, before each election. Demand public transparency
from election officials and representatives on voter purging
methods.
3
 3. VOTER CAGING

WHAT
A political campaign or party lists the names and addresses of those
likely to vote against their candidate. They then send mail to those
voters. If the mail is undeliverable (returned to sender) it's used as
evidence that the voter must not live there and their registration is
invalid. If this is accepted, the voter is purged from registration, usually
without their knowledge. (5)

WHEN/WHERE/WHY
According to the Brennan Center, "voter caging is almost always
pursued with partisan aims.... often targeted at minority voters" from
as early as 1986, though the practice is still legal almost everywhere.
Congress has also deemed the practice unreliable and tried to limit it
with the Motor-Voter Law, although again, minorities and the poor are
less likely to have a license, and therefore benefit less from this. (6)

STILL RELEVANT?
Voter caging is still legal most places, although there are many
reasons mail goes undelivered, but you still are eligible to vote. And
with USPS being defunded, more and more mail goes undelivered.

Homelessness Home + mail Typo in address Recipient is No one is required to

or fleeing abuse address different or name traveling accept mail

SOLUTIONS
Fund the USPS! Advocate for the ban of voter caging.
4
 4. VOTER DISINFORMATION

WHAT
Giving voters false information about when and how to vote,
leading them to fail to cast invalid ballots.

WHEN/WHERE/WHY
In 2011 a conservative political group, Americans for
Prosperity founded by the Koch billionaires sent Democratic
voters incorrect deadlines for returning absentee ballots,
causing errors. In current and previous elections lies about ICE
stationed at polling places deterred many foreign born citizens
or those with relations to immigrants (even legal) from voting,
out of fear of persecution. (7,8)

STILL RELEVANT?
This year, under DeJoy's (who refused to review template for
accuracy) leadership, USPS sent the nation misinformation on
how to vote, knowing voting laws and dates vary significantly
by state. Once alerted to the problem, DeJoy refused to stop
sending misinformation. Other leaders, like Trump, have spread
the myth mail in voting is new and inaccurate, despite existing
since the Civil War, and having only a .004% rate of error,
according to bipartisan fact checking. (9)

SOLUTIONS
Fund the USPS so that they can improve voter education +
ballot delivery. Demand DeJoy's prosecution, advocate for the
abolition of ICE for many other real intimidation tactics (10),
and educate others!

5
 5. STRICT VOTER ID LAWS

WHAT
Undue rules on which IDs are/aren't accepted when voting, esp.
those that disproportionately affect certain demographics.

WHEN/WHERE/WHY
A common example is limiting ID to driver licenses. Who
doesn't have a driver's license? 7% of whites, 10% of latinos,
21% of african americans. The poor are much less likely to have
a car or be certified at all, compared to the upper and middle
class, and disparities get worse for having an up to date ID,
which takes time and money. (11)

STILL RELEVANT?
In 2016 federal court found allowing IDs laws to include
military and concealed carry permits, but not state employee
or university photo IDs was illegal, as it discriminated based on
race and ideology, with black and latinos less likely to qualify,
but this didn't stop the same issues from occurring in 2017, this
time also ruling requiring voters to spend money traveling to a
gov. office to update info counted as a poll tax. This issues
remain pervasive across the country. (12)

SOLUTIONS
Expand accepted IDs to all reliable forms of identification,
particularly those that do not have fiscal barriers.

6
 6. FELONY DISENFRANCHISEMENT

WHAT
When ex-felons who have served their sentences are prevented from
voting. This affects millions, usually minorities, every year, even for
laws that have since been repealed and non violent offenses,.

WHEN/WHERE/WHY?
Felonies are just crimes for which you can be imprisoned for more
than a year. For example sodomy, or gay sex, was and still is a felony
in some states, or possession of non addictive drugs, like weed. (13)

Felonies have long been used to disproportionately imprison people

of color (poc), particularly black people, since the end of slavery in
the US. Rich whites refused to sell or employ now freed black people,
yet sought a new source of 'free' labor, as the economy threatened to
collapse. This created mass poverty for poc and so lawmakers
created the first state prisons, and made things like homelessness,
loitering, and effects of poverty felonies, thus revoking their ability to
vote and creating a new slave labor force, with ex-slave patrols
become the first police departments, searching for poc to arrest and
imprison. All legally, as under the 13th amendment, slavery was
prohibited EXCEPT in the case if imprisonment. (14)

And nothing has changed since then. The war on drugs specifically
criminalized crack more harshly than cocaine, although experts
attested the only real difference between them was that whites
tended to use cocaine and blacks tended to use crack (15). The
justice system continues to target poc more than whites despite
similar drug use, prosecute them more often (16) and sentences them
more severely than white people. And the US economy has never
ceased relying on 'inmate labor' as a means of profit and work, with
for profit prisons currently dominating the sector. See below for
better explanations and potential solutions:
 7. THE ELECTORAL
COLLEGE

WHAT
We don't get to vote for candidates in elections, we really only are
voting on how we'd like our state's electoral college or electors, to
vote. A candidate only needs 270 electoral votes to win, and
depending on your state, electors do not have to vote according to
the voters' preferences. So a candidate can lose the popular vote, but
win an election, like in the 2000 and 2016 elections.

WHEN/WHERE/WHY
The electoral college was created by the founding fathers as a last
line of defense against the people's voice. They believed the citizens
were too uneducated to decide for themselves who should govern,
and included this as a means to suppress their voice. In addition, the
number of electors your state gets has not kept in proportion with
the populace of the state, meaning that a greater group of people can
have less of a say than a smaller group, just bc of where you live, as
opposed to all people having an equal say. (17)

SOLUTIONS?
Abolish the electoral college. It's really not a radical idea, we're
the only democracy that does things this way, and actively
chooses to ignore the will of the people. You can be the change.

1.https://ballotpedia.org/Poll_tax
2.https://tinyurl.com/y3ct7s9g
3.https://tinyurl.com/y245poa2 10.https://tinyurl.com/yxa9g7al
4.https://tinyurl.com/y245poa2 11.https://tinyurl.com/y623vg5h
5.https://tinyurl.com/y5rkgwzz 12.https://tinyurl.com/z3y2csb
6.https://tinyurl.com/y623vg5h 13.https://tinyurl.com/y6tujn3q
7.https://tinyurl.com/y2dxprar 14. https://tinyurl.com/yydt6khf
8.https://tinyurl.com/y2dxprar 15.https://tinyurl.com/y28az7p2
9.https://tinyurl.com/yavkggle 16.https://tinyurl.com/yby8x7bh
17.https://tinyurl.com/yy6px73u