Editorial: The Latino Vote is in Danger
Several states have approved laws limiting access to the ballot for minorities and the impoverished.
Crédito: Ciro Cesar | La Opinión
A number of analyses on electoral fraud reflect that instances of cheating voters are rarer than UFO sightings or being hit by a bolt of lightning. Still, seeking to protect the voting process from a nonexistent problem, numerous states have imposed restrictions to access the ballot that may exclude millions of people from exercising their right.
An estimated 875,000 Latino voters would be affected this year according to a new report by the NALEO Educational Fund. Restrictions established in recent years by a number of Republican-ruled states are designed to discourage minorities and impoverished people from voting by imposing requirements such as rejecting certain kinds of identification documents, shortening registration deadlines and reducing the number of voting sites in strategic areas, among others.
Until 2013, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had required states with a history of racial discrimination to obtain Federal approval before making changes to their electoral laws. That year, the Supreme Court’s decision on the Shelby County v. Holder case eliminated these requirements after the court’s conservative majority considered that the problem of voter discrimination no longer existed.
Soon, those states moved quickly to perform the actions that they had been banned from doing until then: Texas, for instance, changed its law to accept gun and hunting licenses and military cards as proof of identity while rejecting student IDs. In Arizona, this year’s primary saw considerably fewer voting sites in areas where people traditionally vote Democrat. In Kansas, the Spanish version of the literature on voting information contained incorrect information.
Cases of electoral fraud in this country are linked to mail voting, which is not investigated because it is mostly used by Republican voters and voter suppression is precisely the goal for these states.
The solution to this problem lies in the HR 2867, HR 885 and S 1659 bills aiming to mend the damage inflicted by the Supreme Court’s decision. However, these pieces of legislation are virtually useless in a GOP-led Congress.
Ideally, elections would be won by earning the support of voters, but these states have not learned that lesson. They keep on trying to win by blocking the Latino, African-American and lower class vote rather than by debating their ideas and winning over those voters.
