State of US ‘Democracy’: How to deliberately discourage voters

The United States has, through more means than one, been proactively turning voters away from polling booths, thus further disempowering its already ailing democracy.

The Guardian outlined these voter-unfriendly tactics in a recent article, which served as a testament to remarks made by former President Barack Obama in an interview last year, who said, “We’re the only advanced democracy that deliberately discourages people from voting.”

The complement of the methods is generally referred to as “voter suppression” tactics. Such machinations are responsible for a bleak 55 percent turnout in the 2016 polls, which were won by Donald Trump although his archrival Hillary Clinton was ahead in popular votes. The paper, which is investigating the American so-called democratic process and its failures in a probe titled The Fight to Vote, also warned that “voting suppression is already shaping the 2020 election.”

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“Although America prides itself on holding free and fair elections, and the right to vote is enshrined as the foundational principle of its democracy, there is mounting evidence of systemic attempts to prevent growing numbers of Americans from being able to exercise it,” it further cautioned.

The daily cataloged the tactics as the following, saying their implementation has been facilitated since 2013, when the Supreme Court notably debilitated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by allowing states to circumvent it.

1. Spiriting polling stations away

A report released a few months ago by the Leadership Conference Education Fund, a civil rights organization, revealed that 1,688 polling places had been shut since 2012. These closures have taken place in states with histories of racial discrimination in elections, including 214 precinct closures in Georgia.

Ten percent of Georgia’s counties were left with a single precinct for all voters, with some having to travel miles to cast their votes. Outranking Georgia, Texas had 760 poll closures and Arizona had 320.

2. Voter purge

The method features officials taking names off voter rolls to allegedly ensure people do not vote twice and that people who have died or moved get removed.

Though apparently legitimate, the measure might see a voter going to a polling station only to find out that they have no voting record there. As many as 17 million Americans had their names eliminated from the records between 2016 and 2018.

3. Felon disenfranchisement

Approximately 4.7 million Americans are prevented from voting at all. This is the number of convicted felons who have no right to vote.

Forty-eight states have some form of felon disenfranchisement, but three states -- Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia -- disenfranchise people for life.

4. Gerrymandering

The tactic deals a telling blow to the power wielded by the American electorate.

“It features drawing electoral district lines to favor one party by packing voters from another party into as few districts as possible, leaving them with fewer seats after election day,” the paper described.

“It’s no surprise that the US trails behind other democracies in voter turnout – about 55% of eligible Americans voted in the 2016 elections, compared with around 87% in Belgium and 78% in South Korea,” it reported.

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