Voter Suppression Essay Examples

A very controversial topic in the United States is whether or not Americans should be required to vote. Voting is a very essential piece to democracy, but many Americans today are not attending their voting location and supporting the candidate they feel is best. In recent elections, just 60% of registered voters casted their vote for a candidate. This is an issue that many people are not happy about, but whether or not there is reason to fix it is the other side to the case. Voter participation is an issue that has been going on for years, and no laws are in place currently to bring it up. Americans have been proud to live in a “free country”, and a law forcing citizens to vote may be against America’s principles. Compulsory voting should

Voting has not always been as easy as it is today. It is interesting to examine how far America has progressed in its process of allowing different types of people to be able to vote. Voting was once aimed at a particular group of people, which were white males that owned their own property. Today, most people over the age of eighteen can vote, except for the mentally incompetent or people who have been convicted of major felonies in some states. The decline of voter participation has always been a debate in the public arena. According to McDonald and Popkin, it is “the most important, most familiar, most analyzed, and most conjectured trend in recent American political history (2001, 963)” The question is, how important is voter

Throughout the years many Americans have faced what is known as voter suppression. When researching voter suppression you will find that it is defined as a strategy to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing those with voting rights from voting. I interpret that the causes of voter suppression derives from that of equality issues or a misconception of government. However, history recorded the effects of voter suppression which leads to major violence, rebellion, strikes, or in some cases fear. The jarring act of voter suppression began early as 1776 when white men owning property were allowed to vote denying Jews, Catholics, and others their voting rights.

Throughout America’s history the franchise has been withheld from different groups. This has been possible due to weakly written laws that do not provide adequate protections. In 1965 PL 89-110 was passed, this law, commonly known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, finally provided real protections for minorities living in southern states. In recent years the language of the law was modified within the Supreme Court to take away the law’s primary power. In the following mock Congressional testimony we will go back to 1848, 13 years before the American Civil War, and provide evidence of why a law like PL 89-110 is necessary and commendable.

Why? Because of the strong impact it has on the outcome of the election and the number of votes registered. According to Lauren Justice, Latino’s especially were less likely to vote in ‘12 than in ‘08 because of their inability to get a hand of the identification (3). Thousands of people in the states have not been able to require all the necessary items they need in order to get an ID. Some states require an original birth certificate which isn’t always easy to get because of where it’s from. This may not be a problem to some, some like the republicans who set up these laws. Calling them ‘fair’, ‘necessary’, and ‘voter friendly’. The reason they set these rules up is to keep Democrats from stealing elections. How would they do it? Based on numerous studies and surveys, election fraud has been found to be rare, and the in-person fraud that the laws could prevent is virtually absent (Justice 2). Not only is this absurd, but these laws makes it even more difficult for people. If by any means they are not able to get an ID, states like Texas and Wisconsin may let them take an oath. An oath that lets those without an approved ID vote after signing it, only after stating that they cannot “reasonably” obtain one. What about the others who weren’t able to ‘reasonably’ obtain one? What about all the others who can’t take the oath? How can this be fixed? What the states need to do in order for these problems to be fixed is to get rid of the strictness these laws have on the voting. If they do, then more people are willing to vote and can impact the election greatly. If this were to happen, maybe Donald Trump would have not become president and more votes would have

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits voting discrimination. With the condition to receive preclearance stated in section 5 of the Act from the Department of Justice before making any changes affecting the voting process, also came four other prohibitions. The prohibition of literacy test or other similar test or devices as a prerequisite to voter registration is one prevention. The requirement of jurisdictions with significant language minority populations to provide non-English ballots and oral voting instructions is another. Third is the prohibition of vote dilution, which is the remapping of districts to suppress the minority vote. The final provision was one of the most controversial of the Act. It established the federal oversight

The act focuses on the views of millions Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. This book describes the tale of African Americans still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and political power, with lawmakers devising new strategies to keep minorities out of the voting booth and with the Supreme Court declaring a key part of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.

Wonder who’s been a victim of voter suppression? Voter suppression has been a problem since the act of voting came into play. Politicians have schemed since the very beginning to get their way. With the citizens being the voters it’s our responsibility to spot crooked politicians. Sometimes what we see and what we hear are not the truth. With the voter literacy test and laws that dis-proportionally affect African Americans it’s only human nature to be discouraged. What is going on in society isn’t right to us citizens who do up ide by the law. Even with it being un-lawful, Voter suppression is still practiced because some politicians are crooked and the voter literacy test and laws that disproportionately affect African Americans are a prime example.

There are a variety of practices that are put in place to limit certain peoples’ ability to be able to have their voice heard during the electoral process, such as Identification requirements to be able to cast your ballot. The court system has ruled that they are not an unconstitutional act, and even though they are believed the have a legitimate purpose by some people, those very laws and restrictions seem to be adversely affecting certain populations at a much higher rate than others.

In “Race and Beyond: Why Young, Minority, and Low-Income Citizens Don’t Vote,” Sam Fulwood claims, “Regardless of whether a favored candidate won or popular ballot initiative passed, our nation suffered because of the number of people who didn’t vote at all” (par. 2). I agree with Sam Fulwood and I believe it is so unfortunate that Americans don’t use this right. Voting is one of the most valuable possessions that Americans are given and yet they do not use. Many of the countries around the world do not grant voting rights to their citizens. These countries either have a dictatorship or kingdom which prevents citizens from voting. People need to understand the sufferings of those people who struggled for this right. When the United States

Due to the U.S. Constitutions failure to provide that all Americans are to maintain their right to vote, as Americans wait in line to cast their vote on election day, State Legislatures deny an average of 5 to 6 million Americans this basic fundamental “right”! - and its perfectly constitutional for them to do so – again, so long as the “Civil Rights” Amendments are not violated.

In 1973 Congress amended the Voting Rights Act and extended protections to members of “languages minorities.” The new language minorities’ classification meant that the act’s protection now extended to voters non-English speaking minorities. These classifications included those who spoke Spanish, Native American languages, Native Alaskan languages, and Asian languages. Some of the changes to the new amendment within the Voting Rights Act prohibited literacy tests as a requirement for voter registration. It also required jurisdictions with large minority language speaking populations to have non-English speaking ballots as well as oral voting instructions that conformed to the language minorities within their districts. Additionally, the new amendments to the Voting Rights Act also protected minorities from voter dilution (the nullification of minority group votes through a

The main contemporary federal policy that will be examined is the amendments that have been made to the voting acts which empowered states to decide and make judgments on who is eligible to vote. The research will look into how this undermines the rights to vote in our modern society. In particular, the research will focus on the amendment made on the 1965 voting rights act that internationally defined eligibility of a voter with the inclusion of minority groups. A ruling made by the Supreme Court in 2013 gave power to states to determine and register eligible voters. This in my opinion, and from data collected from different articles gave states a chance to create more restrictions on voting rights. Social welfare associations think that beneficiaries of such laws have created a status quo which results in discrimination. The research will look at the impact of such contemporary policies and examine its effect on voting rights and societal perception of inequality.

Since the United States of America established itself as its own self-governing country, one of the things that caused it to be salient and stand out from other countries is its relentless insistence on functioning as a democracy. Wars and protests have occurred so that every type of people, whether it was women or African Americans, may be granted the right to vote. Having a say in the American government is an honor and a privilege bestowed upon American citizens when they reach the age of eighteen. However, in recent years, statistics have shown that voter turnout and participation in recent elections has been rapidly and steadily declining, causing the United States to have the lowest voter participation in the world (“Is the System

At a City Hall meeting in Cleveland, Ohio when asked about the topic of mandatory voting laws (Jackson 2015), President Obama stated, “If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country.” (Stephanopoulos 2015 p5) (Evidence: Testimony) He is right, if everyone voted the political map in the country would be completely different---and not for the better. Compulsory voting can potentially cause the nation 's true political viewpoints to be misrepresented, thus hindering political progression, by making voters feel obligated to choose candidates that may not represent their ideas and forcing the politically disengaged to select random ballots.