by Isabella Crow
As America enters the final hundred days before the 2020 presidential election, the right to vote has become more tenuous than ever. Since Shelby County v. Holder gutted the 1965 Civil Rights Act in 2013, voter suppression tactics have proliferated across the nation, primarily sabotaging would-be Democratic voting blocs. Voter ID laws, registration restrictions, closing polling sites in historically blue districts, felony disenfranchisement, and egregious gerrymandering have all contributed to a voting system rigged in favor of the Republican Party that crushes marginalized dissent under its heel.
These concerns have been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. As common sense public health guidelines warn that in-person voting would be detrimental to the nation’s coronavirus response, Republicans are staging coordinated attacks on the solvency of the USPS—the only agency with the power to ensure free and fair balloting in the largest mail-in election in US history. In addition, millions of Americans are faced with an eviction crisis of historic proportions, threatened with not only the loss of safe and secure housing but their right to vote. Statistically, those most vulnerable to homelessness are more likely to be people of color, and to cast a blue ballot.
Voter suppression is the lynchpin of the Republican machine. They cling to it so staunchly because they know their power depends upon it. Assemblyman Colin Schmitt’s vocal opposition to the redrawing of gerrymandered district lines and the automatic voter registration bill stems from his fear that extending accessible enfranchisement to all New Yorkers will lead to his, and his party’s, electoral demise.