One Person, No Vote Timeline

2016 Presidential Election:
Fewer Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters showed up at the polls than in previous elections. 

Why?
In her book One Person, No Vote, Carol Anderson demonstrates that they were systematically targeted so that they could not cast their ballots.

A Timeline of Racism and Disenfranchisement

Advance in Voting Rights, 1863-1877: Reconstruction

  • Many Black people gained seats in government

Attack on Voting Rights, 1890: Mississippi passes the Mississippi Plan

  • Backlash to gains made during Reconstruction

  • Combination of literacy tests, poll taxes, understanding clauses, etc. 

  • Supposedly “race-neutral” but specifically designed to target Black voters

    • Could not violate the language in the new 15th Amendment that banned discrimination “on account of race” 

  • Other Southern states adopted similar plans 

  • Black voter turnout decreased dramatically

    • Louisiana: Over 130,000 blacks were registered to vote in 1896. By 1904, there were 1,342. 

1900s: Tactics of the Mississippi Plan continued into the 20th century 

  • If the literacy tests, poll taxes, and understanding clauses did not deter Black voters from casting their ballots, Southern politicians had no problem with encouraging violence. 

1946: Maceo Snipes, a Black World War II veteran, cast a ballot in Taylor County, Georgia. A few days after, four white men showed up at his home and shot him repeatedly. His killers were never punished. 

  • The violence was encouraged by Governor-elect Eugene Talmadge 

Advance, 1957: Nine Black students attempted to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas 

Attack, 1957: The Little Rock Nine were met with extreme violence 

Advance, 1957: Civil Rights Act of 1957 signed into law

  • In part due to reaction to Little Rock but also passed because of the Cold War climate

    • Aside from being wrong, racial injustice and violence in the United States looked bad on an international stage when the United States was locked into a battle with the Soviet Union 

  • Did not actually make much of an impact (both by design and in practice) 

    • Reactionary rather than preventative, voting violations had to occur before the DOJ did anything 

    • Lawsuits took years 

    • “Did not provide access to [voter] registration records prior to filing suit. Nor did it prohibit the destruction of these records.” 

      • Cases could easily be thrown out for lack of evidence 

    • All-white juries and southern Federal judges often to receptive to suits 

    • DOJ, FBI, etc. reluctant to pursue/investigate cases 

March 1965: Violence in Selma, much of it on TV, turning point 

Advance in Voting Rights, August 1965: Voting Rights Act of 1965 signed into law

  • Passed House of Representatives (328-74) and Senate (79-18) 

  • Put the onus on states (and local governments) to follow the Constitution 

  • Preclearance 

    • “Identified jurisdictions that had a long, documented history of racial discrimination in voting, and required that the Department of Justice or the federal court in Washington, D.C. approve any change to the voting laws or requirements that those districts wanted to make before it was enacted.” 

Attacks on Voting Rights, 1966: South Carolina challenged constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act in South Carolina v. Katzenbach

  • Argued that it threatened state sovereignty

  • In an 8-1 decision, SCOTUS reaffirmed the constitutionality of the VRA 

1966?: Virginia and Mississippi find new ways to disenfranchise voters of color. 

  • Virginia: Knew that literacy tests, poll taxes, and understanding clauses would not make it through preclearance, argued instead that they were just making “minor changes to aid the efficiency of elections”

    • Before the passage of the Voting Right Act, Virginia had people at the polls to help those who could not read.

    • After the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the laws were changed so that voters needed to physically write in the names of candidates not on the ballot. Ballots with stickers or labels were thrown out. 

  • Mississippi: turned positions that used to be elected (ex: school superintendent) into appointed positions, changed how the elections of county supervisors worked

    • Used to be elected by defined districts

    • Turned into at-large elections, district boundaries were removed as to dilute the power of Black voters 

1971: Mississippi attempted to redesign and “improve” their elections 

  • Required residents in ⅓ of Mississippi’s counties to re-register 

    • These counties constituted 40% of Black voters in the state 

  • DOJ and the VRA did end up squashing Mississippi’s plans 

  • Did not prevent other states from testing the limits of the VRA

1981: Alabama passed a “reidentification” bill under the not so watchful eye of Reagan’s DoJ

  • The law purged rolls in three counties. The law also required voters that used to be registered to go to courthouses and re-identify. 

    • All three of these counties had large Black populations 

  • Black voter registration decreased by 43% 

2000: Bush v. Gore 

  • 20,000 voters, mainly Hispanic and black voters, were purged from the rolls 

  • Poll workers could not get in touch with election officials due to jammed phone lines 

    • Laptops would have provided a better method of communication but they were mainly in mainly white and Republican precincts 

  • Fewer working voting machines in areas with large minority populations 

  • Hanging chads, voting machines couldn’t count the ballots

  • Al Gore asked for a hand recount 

    • Bush’s lead began to decrease dramatically 

  • SCOTUS stepped in

    • Claimed that the recount violent equal protection clause 

      • “Because the process was for those counties with numerous electoral failures and, therefore, some people, somehow, somewhere (that would be in those counties where the polling machines actually worked) weren’t going to have their votes counted again.” 

  • All about installing a Republican president

Advance in Voting Rights, 2006: Reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act

  • One of Bush’s strategy to appeal to more minority voters: White House support for the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act 

  • 390-33 vote in the House, 98-0 vote in the Senate 

    • Bipartisan 

  • Challenges arose barely a week after the VRA was reauthorized 

Attack on Voting Rights, 2013: Shelby County v. Holder

  • 5-4 decision

  • Struck down Section 4 of the VRA: determined which places were put under federal oversight 

2016: “2016 was the first federal election in fifty years held without the protection of the Voting Rights Act” 

  • “The rash of voter ID laws, purged voting rolls, redrawn district boundaries, and closed and moved polling places were the quiet and barely detected fire that burned through the 2016 presidential election, evaporating millions of votes and searing those who hadn’t even been under the original VRA.” 

Notes

2016 Presidential Election

  • The turnout of Black voters decreased by 7 percent since 2008 and 2012.

  • The turnout of Asian American and Hispanic voters dropped also. 

  • “The GOP, therefore, enacted a range of undemocratic and desperate measures to block the access of African American, Latino, and other minority voters to the ballot box. Using a series of voter suppression tactics, the GOP harassed, obstructed, frustrated, and purged American citizens from having a say in their own democracy. The devices the Republicans used are variations on a theme going back more than 150 years. They target the socioeconomic characteristics of a people… and then soak the new laws in “racially neutral justifications”... to cover the discriminatory intent.”

After Reconstruction and into the 1950s/60s 

  • Mississippi Plan : poll taxes, understanding clauses, literacy tests, etc.

    • “all intentionally racially discriminatory but dressed up in the genteel garb of bringing ‘integrity’ to the voting booth.” 

    • Spread to other southern states 

    • Black voter turnout decreased dramatically 

  • Violence

Civil Rights Act of 1957

In response to national reaction to Little Rock and Cold War context 

  • “America was paralyzed, on one hand, by the power of the Southern Democrats in Congress, whose inordinate political strength and control of key committees was based on their ability to win reelection after reelection because of massive disfranchisement and racial terror; and on the other, by the missinoary-like belief that America was the champion of democracy and freedom in the battle against the Soviet Ujion, whose death grip on human rights had no limits.”

    • “Domestic politics and the disproportionate power of the Southern Democrats demanded that the federal government fully capitulate to Jim Crow, while foreign policy, and the need to woo the emerging Third World nations and defeat the Soviets, required that racial discrimination end once and for all.” 

  • Did not actually do that much (both by design and in practice) 

    • was reactionary, not preventative 

      • Lawsuits took years 

    • “Did not provide access to [voter] registration records prior to filing suit. Nor did it prohibit the destruction of these records.” 

      • Cases could easily be thrown out for lack of evidence 

    • All-white juries and southern Federal judges often to receptive to suits 

    • DoJ, FBI, etc. reluctant to pursue/investigate cases

Voting Rights Act of 1965

  • After Selma 

  • Passed House (328-74) and Senate (79-18) 

  • Put the onus on states (and local governments) to follow the Constitution 

  • Preclearance 

“Identified jurisdictions that had a long, documented history of racial discrimination in voting, and required that the Department of Justice or the federal court in Washington, D.C. approve any change to the voting laws or requirements that those districts wanted to make before it was enacted.”

Responses to VRA

  • South Carolina challenged the constitutionality of the VRA only a year after it became law (1966)

    • In South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966), SCOTUS reaffirmed the constitutionality (8-1 decision)

  • Virginia stopped having helpers at the polls to assist people who were illiterate. Voters now had to write in the names of candidates not on the ballot. Ballots that had labels or stickers were not counted. 

  • Mississippi turned previously elected positions into appointed positions or changed the boundaries of districts so that a Black candidate was no longer likely to be elected.

Seeds for Shelby v. Holder

  • Argument that the government was “overstepping” 

  • Success of the VRA

  • “Singling out” of the South

  • Allegations of voter fraud committed by Black people 

    • Pursuing Black people for alleged voter fraud

      • Sessions 

  • SCOTUS easily overturning a federal election

    • Bush v. Gore 

  • More and more justices openly questioning the constitutionality of preclearance 

Shelby County v. Holder 

  • 5-4 decision

  • Struck down Section 4 of the VRA: determined which places were put under federal oversight 

2016 election

  • Actually the first federal election in half a century where voters were not protected by the VRA 

    • Voter ID laws, purging the voter rolls, redistricting, etc. 

    • Not just that Black and minority voters did not show up, they were systematically targeted