Racism is the motivation behind all of these recent state voter suppression laws. I feel silly even making that point because it’s so bloody obvious.
And yet those who push these laws forward are still trying to pass their racism off as a valiant crusade to make voting access and election results more fair and equitable. It’s as laughably unconvincing of a disguise as putting on a fake mustache.
The lawsuit requires anyone who assists another person in casting their ballot to “disclose and document their name, address, relationship to the voter, and whether the assistor received compensation.”
The main objective, of course, is to make voting as difficult as possible, so that more Black people will be discouraged or unable to cast their ballots. The most infamous of these laws, SB 1, which passed at the end of August in Texas, has the added potentiality of disenfranchising a lot of disabled folks, too. That’s why a federal lawsuit seeking to derail the law declares that it violates not just the civil and voting rights of Black and Latinx people, but also the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Among the lawsuit’s plaintiffs are Houston Justice, the Houston Area Urban League, and the Arc of Texas. The Arc’s mission is “promoting, protecting, and advocating for the human rights and self-determination of Texans with intellectual and developmental disabilities.”
The complaint says, “S.B. 1 serves to make voting more burdensome for Black and Latino voters and sends a message to people of color more broadly that their participation in the democratic process is not welcome . . . . The law also erects barriers to voting that will disproportionately and unlawfully deny equal access to individuals with disabilities.”
The lawsuit says many aspects of SB 1 will surely screw over disabled voters; for example, it places harsh limits on voting by means other than in-person on election day. These include the elimination of drive-through voting centers and twenty-four-hour voting, and the prohibition of vote-by-mail dropboxes.
The timing of this is perfect for those who wish to stick it to disabled voters while they’re also sticking it to Black and Latinx voters. A report by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission says that in the 2020 election, 74 percent of disabled voters cast their ballots either by mail or by voting early. This shift away from voting in person on election day is a big reason why “voting difficulties” encountered by disabled people “declined markedly” in 2020 as compared to 2012, the report explains.
And even if a disabled person goes to their polling place on election day in Texas, the lawsuit says that SB 1 subjects them to an extra, needless hassle by requiring anyone who assists another person in casting their ballot to “disclose and document their name, address, relationship to the voter, and whether the assistor received compensation.”
The complaint also says the assistant must make the following affirmation: “I swear (or affirm) under penalty of perjury that the voter I am assisting represented to me they are eligible to receive assistance . . . I will confine my assistance to reading the ballot to the voter, directing the voter to read the ballot, marking the voter’s ballot, or directing the voter to mark the ballot.”
This provision particularly galls me because whenever I go to my polling place in Chicago, I bring along someone to accompany me into the booth and physically help me vote. Who they are and what they’re doing for me is nobody’s damn business. And the idea that they would ever try to manipulate me into voting a certain way is absurd.
Maybe Texas state legislators and the governor know something I don’t. Maybe down there hundreds of thousands of scam artists are accompanying disabled people into the booth and intimidating them into voting for Democrats.
But I doubt it.