With the mid-terms fast approaching, an Ethnic Media Services briefing, Sept. 30, explored threats to the way elections are run in the U.S. – not just who gets to vote, but how and whether the votes get counted.

Speakers – Sean Morales-Doyle, Acting Director for the Democracy Program, Brennan Center Justice; Michelle Bishop, Voter Access & Engagement Manager, National Disability Rights Network; Kira Romero-Craft, Managing Attorney for the Southeast Office, Latino Justice; and Evan Milligan, Executive Director, Alabama Forward – discussed gerrymandered maps that diminish the power of voters of color, laws that restrict access to the polls, efforts by partisan poll workers to interfere in the election process, among other dangerous trends, and efforts to address them, including two law suits by civil rights groups in Alabama and Louisiana being argued before the Supreme Court on Oct. 4.

(Above, l-r): Sean Morales-Doyle, Acting Director for the Democracy Program, Brennan Center Justice; Michelle Bishop, Voter Access & Engagement Manager, National Disability Rights Network; Kira Romero-Craft, Managing Attorney for the Southeast Office, Latino Justice; and Evan Milligan, Executive Director, Alabama Forward. (EMS)

Evan Milligan, who has sued the state of Alabama, saying its new redistricting map shortchanges Black voters, spoke first.

“The Milligan versus Merrell case is going to be argued Oct. 4, at the United States Supreme Court,” said Milligan at the Sept. 30 briefing.

“At issue in the case is the fate of the Voting Rights Act, that came on the heels of years of activist work that was led by people who lived in the black belt region of Alabama. These are some of the poor rural counties, initially utilized for plantations to grow peanuts, cotton, because the soil is very dark and rich.

“To produce those commodities, enslaved African people and enslaved Black Americans were brought there and then years later remained there and continued to build families, hence region of the state has the highest concentration of black communities in our state.

“These are the descendants of those formerly enslaved people, who are saying these communities deserve more representation at the Congressional level.

“In a state of about five million people, 26-27 percent of them are black people. 14 percent of our Congressional districts are drawn in a way so that black communities can elect the candidate of their choice. One of those districts serves most of the black belt – District Seven.

“Due to population growth, the state of Alabama has an opportunity to add a second opportunity District that would allow black communities to elect the candidate of their choice. “Looking at data of voting behavior, we see racial polarization and we see white communities very often not choosing to vote for black candidates. We also see cohesion among black communities in voting patterns, black communities expressing an interest in voting for black candidates or candidates that represent the interests of their community.

“Our lawyers demonstrated that it’s possible to draw maps that add a second district that would keep the opportunity District we currently have and create a second district that allow for black communities to choose a candidate of their choosing and it’s possible to build those maps in ways that aren’t gerrymandered.

“When we took this case to a Federal Court, it was heard by a three-judge panel, who voted unanimously in our favor. Two of those judges were appointed by President Trump. They said that it was overwhelmingly likely that if we took that case to trial, we would demonstrate that a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act had taken place.

“They ordered the state of Alabama to draw a new Congressional map that featured two districts that allowed black communities to elect a candidate of their choice.

“They had many ways they could have done that, they chose not to do any of them, so here we are. The court will hear our case this October 4.

“Another piece is representation is when we draw political districts that unfairly disadvantage communities based on race, the candidates that run in those districts, run to extremes. There’s no need to compromise.

“We’ve seen this play out time and time again, around the world, we don’t have to do this. So, regardless of the outcome of our case, we’re calling for Americans to join us in building a pro-democracy movement,” said Milligan.

Interested readers can view the resources on https://powerontheline.org

Kira Romero-Craft, managing attorney for the Southeast Office, Latino Justice, gave an update on Florida’s situation.

“Florida is also challenging the redistricting maps. Although Florida’s growth, in terms of communities of color has been unprecedented, particularly in Black and Latino communities, the black districts were cut in half by Governor DeSantis,” said Kira.

“Redistricting efforts and cases are still being fought in State and Federal Court, and it looks like we will most likely have those districts remain in time for these elections.

“It could take months and years to get those addressed.

“We filed a case, with other partners, in the spring of last year as related to Florida’s SD-90 case that is an anti-voter law, that was passed following the unprecedented turnout in 2020 of voters of color in Florida.

“Essentially what it did is it scaled back all the advancements that Florida made in the pandemic.

“In Florida, we saw laws that were passed to stop solicitation meaning assisting voters who were in long lines for food, water, as well as going after Third Party voter registration organizations, whose goal is to register voters, particularly disenfranchised voters, voters of color, black communities, Latino, Asian communities, disabled folks.

“What the Florida legislature did was they essentially made the requirement that Third Party voter registration organizers, when registering voters, had to provide a disclaimer essentially advising the voter that their voter registration potentially could not be processed in time, which caused a chilling effect for the Third Party voter registration organizations to then be able to complete the process of collecting those registrations.

“We filed a lawsuit in March of last year, and at around the same time this year, a 288-page decision from the Federal Court in the Northern District of Florida, we won an incredible victory fight, finding for us on most of our claims, which was remarkable given that in this state, the legislature and the governor have been activists, meaning that they are going after anyone who challenges the state and, in particular the legislature.

“Our lawsuit was also part of other lawsuits by the League of Women Voters of Florida rising together for their Latinx Hispanic federation UnidosUS, all organizations that primarily work with communities of color, Latino communities, and other historically disenfranchised communities.

“What happens in the South, impacts the entire country. The cases that we bring, on behalf of disenfranchised communities, can show the power of partisan groups – how they use the democratic system that we currently know today, to gain advantages.

“Today, it may be the Republican party, but tomorrow maybe the Democratic party, and talking about these issues is very important. These are the infrastructure of American democracy,” said Kira.

Speaking of Amendment Four, Kira said, “A historic constitutional amendment to Florida’s Constitution, allowing for folks to have felony convictions to then gain their voting rights back, except for a couple of exceptions that passed in 2018, the Florida legislature subsequently piled a SB-7066 which then was the implementation laws.

“What we’re seeing currently under this legislature is that folks are being impacted. Folks who thought that they were eligible to vote, may have unknowingly registered to vote, and pass the ballot.

“A few months ago, Governor announced that there were 20 prosecutions as related to folks who had committed voter fraud. These voters did try to confirm their eligibility and received voter registration cards and indeed went ahead and voted.

“Unfortunately, this is now being used again, to chill voters, and voters who may have been impacted by prior criminal convictions. This is something that I think folks should be very much aware of and understand that this is again a system that has been used traditionally in this country to disenfranchise voters, in particular black voters.

“It is being used again as a weapon to keep voters from exercising the franchise and it’s important to uplift that. This is a threat to democracy and there is no reason that any voter, regardless of prior criminal history, should not be eligible to exercise a franchise,” said Kira.

Michelle Bishop, voter access and engagement manager at the National Disability Rights Network, talked about issues her organization was concerned about going into the midterm elections.

“I thought it might be helpful to back up just a little bit for a moment and talk about voters with disabilities more broadly. I’m aware that this is a community that not everyone is maybe as knowledgeable about as someone like me.

“People with disabilities, according to the Census, are about 20 percent of the entire U.S population, about one in five Americans. But, if we look at data that we have from the CDC and Pew Research Center, they put that number more like 25, about one in four Americans are people with disabilities, a much larger community than we generally understand.

“We do have data that shows that this is an incredibly diverse intersectional community. People with disabilities are over-represented among racial minority communities, the LGBTQIA+ community, as well people who are low income.

“People with disabilities are underemployed and unemployed at an astonishing rate. There are about 40 million eligible voters with disabilities in the United States, that’s one-sixth of the total electorate of the United States, enough to determine the outcome of any election we’ve ever had in the United States. But the turnout of voters with disabilities actually lags behind our non-disabled peers at a rate of about six percent, and that’s fairly consistent across election cycles.

“There is data to show from Pew Research Center that people with disabilities actually report that elections really matter, and that they’re paying attention to the outcome of elections at a higher rate than their non-disabled peers.

“That gap in turnout isn’t due to a lack of interest in elections, it’s not an apathy, it’s more that there are stable barriers over time that have truly prevented our participation.

“The majority of polling places in the United States for traditional in-person voting are inaccessible. They’re out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“Traditional vote by mail and absentee voting are inaccessible to people with disabilities. Mailing someone a piece of paper and expecting them to be able to mark it with a pen is something that someone who’s blind someone who doesn’t have use of their hands is never going to be able to do, so there are some stable barriers over time,” said Bishop.

“Few issues that we’re particularly concerned about over the last few election cycles that we think are going to continue to be issues going forward – First, going back to the 2016 Presidential Election, we’ve seen increased calls for poll watchers, particularly partisan poll watchers, and some calls for them to be more aggressive and disruptive in polling places. This always concerns us that in particular people with disabilities and people with limited proficiency in English are going to be targets of poll watchers, and questioned on their eligibility to vote despite the fact that they are citizens; that they are eligible to vote; and they’re on the voter rolls, when they show up to vote on Election Day.

Second, one of our major concerns, going into the midterm elections coming out of the 2020 Presidential Election and the large number of baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election, there have been repeated attempts to limit that right to voter assistance for voters. This is a federally protected right. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 says that if you are a person with a disability or a person with limited proficiency in English, that you have the right to bring anyone you want with you to assist you to vote, or to help you cast your vote by mail ballot.

“The only limitations on that are it can’t be your employer and it can’t be your union representative. This doesn’t have to be someone who’s also voting. They don’t have to be a citizen. They don’t have to be over the age of 18. It can be whoever you trust to help you mark your ballot the way you intend, or help you get your ballot back by the deadline if you’re voting by mail.

“This is particularly critical for people with disabilities who live in long-term care facilities. People who live in nursing homes and institutions, for whom voting by mail is somehow often the only way they can access the ballot, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they often rely on the assistant of their choice to help them to return that ballot. We’ve seen attempts to limit this through State legislation.

“We just saw two successful suits challenging those types of laws, in Wisconsin, and North Carolina, recently, because it is a violation of the Voting Rights Act to attempt to limit who can assist a voter or how many voters one person can assist, which would also deny some voters these assistant of their choice, especially when you think about somebody who maybe, lives in a group home, a residential facility where they might be relying on the staff to assist them to cast their ballots.

“We’ve seen an increase in States looking to limit that Federal right to assistance, that concerns us. We’re also concerned that that could lead to challenges at the polls for in-person voting.

“We have seen, particularly since 2018, an increase in unnecessary closure of polling places that’s being blamed on the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“Randolph County, Georgia, was notable for this when they closed 80 percent of their polling places and they claimed it was because they were inaccessible. The important thing to note there is that the disability rights community is not asking for pulling closure of inaccessible polling places. Taking away a polling place entirely in no way makes voting more accessible for people with disabilities or any voters,” said Bishop.

Sean Morales-Doyle, acting director for the Democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice said, “Acknowledging that much of what we’re seeing in 2022 and much of the many of the concerns that we have, heading into the 2022 election, are not entirely new.

“The 2020 election had a real impact on these fights. We are now living post 2020, with a political system in which a very large percentage of our electorate has bought into lies about our democracy, lies about what happened in the 2020 election, and lies about the fraud that they claim is rampant within our electoral system.

“The Brennan Center has been tracking every piece of voting legislation introduced in every State Legislature across the country for more than a decade, and over that, more than a decade, we’ve seen many restrictive voting laws passed in many states around the country, and that whole time those laws have been driven by lies about so-called voter fraud. But the 2020 election completely changed the scale of what we’re seeing here.

“In 2021, we saw more restrictive voting laws passed than we had ever seen before, by a large margin in the decade, plus that we have been looking at these trends – one out of every three restrictive laws passed in that decade, were passed in 2021. It is being driven by the lies about the 2020 election being stolen or rigged.

“If you look at the conspiracy theories pushed in the litigation challenging the outcome of the 2020 election, you can draw a direct line between those conspiracy theories and the policies that are being introduced.

“In 2020, an armed attempt attempted insurrection and active attempts to try to subvert the outcome of our Presidential Election, we’re seeing those lies live on in the selection interference legislation which is a new thing and a scary thing. It’s not just legislation that we’re seeing these restrictions or these attempts and interference, there are practical realities of what we are seeing on the ground. We’re seeing a growing effort vigilante effort by people to root out this non-existent fraud.

“People canvassing door to door asking voters questions about whether they voted in the last election, using the information they get through those canvases to file. In Georgia we’re seeing mass challenges of 30,000 voters being challenged in Gwinnett County, and we expect that that kind of vigilantism may continue to show up as we head into the elections at polling places and afterwards. We’re seeing election deniers running for office as election officials.

‘We want to make clear that these are really concerning trends. We really need to be worried about the fact that there are people out there who are attacking our democracy and the institutions that our country is meant to be built on. But I also want to be clear that those institutions are strong, and we have a lot of safeguards in place to prevent these things from making everything fall apart,” concluded Sean.