Voter Suppression in Georgia Slide 1: Title Slide Slide 2: Overview - PDF document

Voter Suppression in Georgia Slide 1: Title Slide Slide 2: Overview Slide 3: Voter Suppression • Voter suppression is used to prevent people who are otherwise eligible to vote from exercising their right to vote. Voter suppression in the United States specifically has been used to suppress the votes of various minority groups. • Voter Suppression various from state to state, and by jurisdiction within individual states. Slide 4: History of Voter Suppression • Voter suppression has been used in the United States for centuries • Eligibility to vote o 1776: Only white men age 21 and older who own land could vote. Slaves, white women were among those who were not allowed to vote. • The Constitution (1789) o The constitution did not create national uniform voting mandates but it did give states the power to set their own individualized voting mandates. o After the ratification of the Constitution most states maintained that only white male land owners could vote. Slide 5: History of Voter Suppression continued Slide 6: Impact of the 14 th and 15 th Amendments (Brief) • After the Civil War, Georgia maintained that only white men were eligible to vote. • The ratification of the 14 th Amendment in 1868 provided for equal protection of the laws for all citizens including former slaves. o The 14 th amendment is only applied to the states so the federal government could not restrict racial discrimination by private actors • The ratification of the 15 th Amendment in 1870 prevents state and local governments from denying the right to vote to all citizens on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude o After the ratification of the 15 th amendment most states continued to use voting mandates such as poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud, and intimidation to prevent qualified voters from voting. o Essentially, the 15 th Amendment only prevented explicit disenfranchisement on the basis of race. At the time, Black men could vote but in the South in states like Georgia, disenfranchisement laws kept them from exercising their right to vote.

Slide 7: Disenfranchisement laws in Georgia • Georgia used various methods to disenfranchise black people o Violence o Fraud o Literacy Test • The poll tax was a tax applied to people, mostly Black people. It made tax cumulative meaning that all past unpaid poll taxes accumulate and that an individual must pay the unpaid taxes to be able to vote. To be able to vote, an individual was required to pay all their back taxes before being allowed to vote. • During the 1880s the black vote was suppressed for state and national elections. Democrats passed laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive Slide 8: The Civil Rights Era (1945-1968) • In the early twentieth century Georgia repealed some of their voting restrictions including abolishing the poll tax in 1945. • Civil Rights Act of 1964 o Banned discrimination on the basis a race, color, sex, religion, and national origin, ended unequal application of voter registration requirements, and ended segregation in schools, public places, and places of employment • Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights (1965) o March 7, 1965 peaceful participants in the march were attacked by Alabama state troopers who beat them with nightsticks, tear gas, and whips after the participants refused to turn back o After the incident, President Johnson called for comprehensive voting rights legislation Slide 9: Voting Rights Act • President Johnson signs the voting Rights Act which abolished discriminatory voting practices which prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote. It required that states and jurisdictions with a history or racialized disenfranchisement to secure permission from the DOJ before making any changes to their voting laws. • The Act follows the language of the 15 th Amendment. It applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the literacy tests on a nationwide basis • Voting Rights Act gave black people means to challenge voting restrictions and improve their voter turnout • Before the passage of the civil rights act, fewer than a third of age-eligible blacks in Georgia were registered to vote. • Voting Rights Act Breakdown

• Section 5 • Section 4 Slide 10: Voting Rights Act Aftermath o Georgia v. United States, 411 U.S. 526 (1973) ▪ The state submitted a reapportionment plan to the Attorney General who objected to the plan on the basis that he was unable to conclude that the plan did not a have a racially discriminatory effect on voting. The district court found that the State had not obtained prior clearance from the Attorney general or the District Court as required under §5 of the Voting Rights Act. ▪ The Supreme Court held that the reapportionment changes, which have the potential for diluting Black noting power, are standards, practices, or procedures with respect to voting within the meaning of §5 of the Voting Rights Act o City of Rome v. United States, 466 U.S.156 (1980) ▪ In 1966 the General Assembly of Georgia changed the electoral process of the City of Rome, Georgia. In order for the changes to take effect, the Attorney General of the United States was required to preclear the changes in accordance with the Voting Rights Act The Attorney General refused approve the changes based on his feeling that it would eliminate the power of the African-American electorate. • Wesberry v. Sanders (1964. holding Georgia’s malapportioned congressional districts unconstitutional) • Fortson v. Dorsey (1965. First recognizing the potential of unconstitutional minority vote dilution in Georgia’s State Senate redistricting) Slide 11: Other cases defining scope • Georgia cases defining the scope of section 5 o Common Cause v. Billups, 554 F.3d 1340 (11 th Cir. 2009). ▪ Plaintiffs contended that §21-2-417 of the Voter ID law, requiring photo identification to vote, unduly burdened their right to vote in violation the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. ▪ Voters in Georgia were not required to present any proof of identity to vote until 1997, when the General Assembly enacted a statue that required voters to present identification to election officials to admitted to the polls and allowed to vote. Several kinds of identification were allowed under that law, including a drive r’s license, birth certificate, a copy of a current utility bill, and a payroll check. Voters who were unable to produce acceptable identification

were allowed to vote if they signed a statement under oath confirming their identity. ▪ In 2005, the General Assembly amended the identification statute to require all registered voters in Georgia to present a government- issued photo identification to election officials to be admitted to the polls and allowed to vote in person. o Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, 83 S. Ct. 801 (1963) ▪ The voter claimed that the county unit system of primary election gave greater weight to votes of citizens from rural counties than to votes of residents of urban counties. The district court enjoined the use of the system for state party primary elections unless there was no greater disparity against any county than existed against any state in national elections. ▪ On appeal, the United States Supreme Court held that, under the Equal Protection Clause, once the geographical unit for which a representative was to be chosen was designated, all voters were to have an equal vote. Home site was not a permissible basis for distinguishing between qualified voters within the state. Once a class of voters had been chosen and their qualifications specified, there was no constitutional way by which equality of voting power could be evaded. ▪ In vacating the judgment and remanding the case, the Court concluded that the concept of political equality in the voting booth contained in the Fourteenth Amendment extended to all phases of state elections. Slide 12: Gutting Voting Rights Act • Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 2 (2013) o The Supreme Court case looked at two sections of the Voting Rights Act. ▪ Section 5 which required that lawmakers in states with a history of discriminating against minority voters get permission before changing their voting rules ▪ Section 4(b) which outlined which jurisdictions were subject to the section 5 requirement based on their history of discrimination in voting. Coverage Formula • The Supreme Court found section 4(b) to be unconstitutional because the coverage formula used data that was over 40 years old and no longer relevant to current needs and therefore posed an impermissible burden on the constitutional principles of federalism and equal sovereignty of the states.