The 15th amendment to the Constitution states: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Issues regarding voter ID laws are erupting around the country. Kris Kobach was recently rebuked by U.S. Judge Julie Robinson, whose decision was that the citizenship ID law instituted in Kansas and supported by Kobach amounted to voter suppression, because many Kansans, especially the poor and minorities, could not produce documented evidence of citizenship. Kobach had suspended the right to vote of somewhere near 35,000 Kansans because they could not produce “proof of citizenship.”
Researchers have found that voting by noncitizens is rare. In a recent book called One Person, No Vote, author and scholar Carol Anderson asserts that Kobach’s purge was not driven by any crisis or urgent need, and no threat to the ballot box existed. Instead, she argues this was about Kobach’s desire to remove the poor and minorities from the voter rolls. This amounted to voter suppression that would likely favor Republican candidates.
The latest episode related to possible voter suppression is in Georgia, where Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp is locked in a heated gubernatorial race with African American Democratic candidate Stacy Abrams. Georgia employs the “exact match” registration process that is overseen by Kemp, meaning the names in its voter registration database must match those in the Department of Motor Vehicles in every way. If a single letter or number is off, the person would be denied a valid registration. Kemp has put 53,000 voter registrations on hold. 70 percent of those applicants is black.
Carol Anderson calls this a “monstrous little program,” because the real result is voter suppression, and not the prevention of voter fraud.
