Why Voting is So Hard
by Anthony Arnold
May 2020
As states explore how to open back up, there’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding everything.
One thing we are certain of is that this November millions of Americans will make their voices heard in what’s one of the most consequential elections in many of our lifetimes. The next President will be tasked with not only making sure the country recovers from the pandemic, but also with the task of repairing a severely damaged economy.
With so much on the line, we wanted to paint a picture of not only what to expect when we vote, but also to explain why it’s so difficult to reform our voting process, in the first place. This piece will give a brief overview of the past, but be sure to check out our companion piece focusing specifically on the elections this fall.
Long before the pandemic arrived, expanding access to voting in the United States was contentious and partisan. Just in the last few years we’ve seen efforts to limit who can vote via voter ID laws, targeted closings of voting locations, and the weakening of the Voting Rights Act.
But as is typically the case, a crisis has drawn attention to just how dire the situation really is. In the worst case scenario, we could face virtually unprecedented obstacles to voting this year. With the possibility of a second wave of the pandemic possible, and any complications amplified by the previously mentioned issues, the choice to vote could quite literally be a matter of life and death, for some of us.
And this isn’t hyperbole. Citizens in Wisconsin voted recently, and the results were not encouraging. While it’s true that there were a record number of absentee ballots cast, there was a sharp decline in total voting. Too many were unable to get absentee ballots in time and were forced to wait hours in line. Polling stations were closed due to safety reasons, the state government was largely unresponsive to the demands of both poll workers and voters, and as a result, voters risked their physical safety in order to exercise their most basic right.
The question at the heart of this is simple: Why? Why is voting so difficult? Why is reform so hard? And why are we in this position, right now?
Let me be clear. I have intentionally narrowed my lens in order to examine this. Voting in this country is as complicated an issue as any you might find. I’m not attempting to give a comprehensive overview. What I am hoping to do is challenge the typical narrative surrounding our democracy. The roots of our voting problem go deep, and if we want to get serious about fixing the problem, then we have to understand that.
The key to understanding the depth of the problem is simple. You were never supposed to vote. When I say “you” I’m not referring to every single one of us, specifically. What I mean is that voting was designed to be highly restrictive. So restrictive, in fact, that most of us wouldn’t have qualified.
And this isn’t just a matter of race, which is how it’s often framed. Though it’s clear that the racial dynamics impacted everything, the founders weren’t interested in denying only people of color the right to vote. They were interested in preventing most people from voting. The right to vote was designed to be accessible to a small sliver of people.
That’s because voting was never about the “people.” What voting was about back then, and now, was power. Choosing elected officials is the single greatest power that any person can possess in our country, and the founders didn’t believe in giving that power out to anybody. Only white, male, property owners were deemed worthy to participate.
Obviously, this has changed over time. There’s been a clear move towards expanding the right to vote. But the original sin has prevented either side from fully adopting the idea that more democracy, full stop, is a good thing. Not making voting, the cornerstone of our system, a protected right for every citizen was the most catastrophic mistake the founders made. And it’s one that has allowed partisanship and politics to consistently interfere with the will of the voters.
We see it in gerrymandering, an inherently undemocratic process, meant to allow politicians to choose their voters. We see it in the presence of superdelegates that exist to influence voters in a way that ensures that parties, and not people, are the priority. And we see it with the influence that money plays in our politics. These things exist in part because the foundation of our system was not built on the idea that the voice of the common person is the most important one. What we have instead is a system designed to create outcomes that can be predictably managed.
And if your goal is to obtain and keep power, then you want that predictability. This creates an extremely perverse set of motivations for politicians. What they don’t want is elections where “anything” could happen. What they don’t want is constant competition where voters might feel as if there are many choices. What they don’t want is elections that they might actually lose. So, what they’ve chosen to do is consistently reinforce a system where those outcomes are less likely.
That’s the thread that has been running through our “democracy” from the beginning. I use that term lightly because when you look at the massive numbers of people who couldn’t vote, it’s clear that for most of our history we actually haven’t been a democracy at all. What we have historically is something else entirely – a country where power, and the right to choose who has power, has been limited to a relatively small percentage. And a country where challenging that has been an endless and brutal slog.
This has played out time and time again. In the beginning, less than 10% of the population was eligible to vote. It would be nearly 200 years before the right to vote had been sufficiently expanded and protected enough that we could truthfully call our country a democracy. For women and people of color that right was obtained despite violence and widespread resistance. That resistance came from everywhere. Average citizens took to the street to fight back, politicians ran on platforms built around denying those rights, and the Supreme Court handed out decisions that stalled progress.
But, while the darkest days of voting rights in this country are behind us, that doesn’t mean that vestiges of the old system don’t remain. The past never really goes away. It influences and shapes us even today.
We saw that past influencing events in Wisconsin. The stakes were high for the voters there. But Republicans weren’t interested in having a contest on fair grounds. So they turned to the oldest trick in the book. They took away the right to vote. We should all be outraged.
Every time you hear a politician defending gerrymandering, or a pundit explaining why it’s ok when “our side” does it, think about what they’re really saying. They’re using the cover of partisanship to justify taking away somebody else’s rights. They’re hoping that we, the voters, will be so caught up in their bickering that we won’t realize that when one of us loses that right, we all suffer down the road.
Before our elections play themselves out this fall, and for as long as our country exists, we’re going to see all sorts of power plays attempted. Crisis and chaos create opportunity, and smart politicians create controversy so that they have a chance to further their agenda. They then attempt to manipulate us by saying that if we support them, then we can "win".
When it comes to voting rights, though, there can be no more compromise. When one of us loses we all suffer. And we’ve already allowed our rights to be slowly chipped away. What happened in Wisconsin cannot be allowed to happen anywhere else. This fall we have to stand up and demand that our right to vote be protected.
We have to remain vigilant and ensure that our shameful past doesn’t become our future.