‘Voter Suppression’ And Voting Integrity

Clear thinking is not enhanced by assailing any restriction of the voting franchise as “voter suppression.” Nor are regulations which have a so-called disparate impact on black Americans necessarily racist. Throughout American history urban political machines catering to rising groups in society have been prone to engage in voting fraud. Lincoln Steffens’s The Shame of the Cities is not far behind us, nor are the 60,000 “ghost votes” of Boss Pendergast’s Kansas City. Disparaging all restrictive regulations is indeed “Defining Deviancy Down.”

Similarly, demands for curtailment of gerrymandering are not credible when legislation, like the Democrats H.R.1, seeks to grandfather the racial gerrymandering carried out by virtue of the second Voting Rights Act.

The pandemic gave rise to numerous changes in voting procedures, primarily enhanced mail-in voting, expansion of early voting, and relaxation of identification requirements. The novelty of the new rules limited gaming of the system; if they persist, the potential for chicanery will be better understood.

Not all restrictions on the right to vote should be deemed presumptively illegitimate. There were once property qualifications, poll taxes, and residency requirements on the theory that voters should have a stake in the system and should not be victimizing others to give themselves benefits. These have been rightfully eroded since, with industrialization and a service economy, property no longer equates to virtue. But it is still rational to have voting rules that discourage literal vote-buying.

Literacy tests were assumed to be reasonable by the framers of the 15th Amendment. The North Carolina test, unlike most fairly administered in its later days, was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court speaking through Justice William Douglas in Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections several years after Brown v. Board of Education. They were since prohibited by federal statute first in the states where they were presumptively misused and then universally, though the validity of the latest statute is open to question. But surely there is enough left of earlier concerns for us not to affirmatively encourage voting by the senile, the mentally infirm under institutional control, and those under guardianship because of an inability to manage their affairs.

Criminal convictions once forfeited civil rights, the theory being that those who could not govern themselves should not be governing others. In the Athenian system, voting rights of citizens were accompanied by civic duties and offices, assigned by sortition. The ravages of the drug war have caused us to be kinder to misdemeanants and even to felons, but surely it is still reasonable to have procedures to restrict voting  by those willing to engage in serious crime.