Fighting Voter Disenfranchisement in the South

Madison is a sophomore at Barnard College majoring in history and minoring in political science. As a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, she is especially passionate about expanding voting rights and creating more channels for political participation in the South.

At the time of its enactment, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) was a landmark piece of civil rights legislation, as it prohibited racial discrimination at the ballot box. In 2013, however, the Supreme Court declared Sections 5 and 4(b) of the VRA unconstitutional in its Shelby County v. Holder decision. Section 5 imposed special restrictions on states and counties that have a history of disenfranchising people of color, which Section 4(b) defined as those which used literacy tests and had a voter turnout rate below 50% in 1964. Prior to the 2013 Shelby decision, these states and counties, most of which are in the South, were unable to change their election laws without receiving the permission of the Attorney General or a D.C. district court. Hence, the Court’s ruling in Shelby dealt a major blow to voting rights activists in the South by removing a major institutional check on areas with a demonstrated history of voter suppression. Indeed, following the Shelby decision, the legacy of Jim Crow has become particularly apparent in states throughout the South, including in Alabama, where the introduction of voter ID laws has corresponded with the closure of DMV offices in numerous predominantly Black areas, and in Florida, where formerly incarcerated people are required to pay all legal fines and fees before their voting rights can be restored, which amounts to a contemporary poll tax.

The 2020 election in Georgia, however, proved that many activists remain undeterred. Following the Shelby decision, grassroots organizers in Georgia were forced to modify their strategies. Organizations like Georgia Stand-Up and Fair Fight Action began going directly to boards of elections to learn more about changes to polling place locations, urging citizens to lobby their local officials when new restrictions were put in place (i.e., the removal of ballot boxes), and actively communicating with voters to alert them of their rights and options on election day. The results of their efforts were stunning. More than 800,000 Georgians have registered to vote for the first time since 2018, which certainly played a role in Joe Biden becoming the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton’s victory in 1992. Moreover, the 2020 election saw both of the state’s incumbent Republican senators be unseated by two Democrats, Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossof, who are Georgia’s first Black and Jewish senators, respectively.

These results were particularly meaningful to Stacey Abrams, the founder of Fair Fight Action who unsuccessfully ran to be Georgia’s governor in 2018. Abrams, who is part of a long history of Black female voting rights activists in the South, founded her grassroots organization to counter the racially motivated voter suppression that she believes cost her the governorship. Beyond the aforementioned ground-work tactics, Fair Fight Action has also taken their concerns to court: the organization brought a lawsuit against Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, to challenge the state’s use of signature matching, electoral-roll purges, and other measures that disproportionately disenfranchise people of color. (In Florida, for instance, signature matching was found to result in the rejection of Black and Latinx voters’ ballots at twice the rate of white voters’.) Abrams was evidently not discouraged by her own electoral loss. Rather, it galvanized her to challenge the voter suppression and disenfranchisement that has gone largely unchecked in the South, especially in the aftermath of Shelby County v. Holder.

While the work of activists in Georgia in 2020 is promising, numerous barriers remain in place for voters across the South—and grassroots organizers’ success has prompted the introduction of new legislation that aims to further suppress the vote. For example, Republican legislators in Georgia recently passed a bill that will, among other things, tighten voter ID requirements for absentee ballots and restrict the use of ballot drop boxes. Conversely, Senators Warnock and Ossoff have both expressed support for reviving the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would reinstate and modernize the provisions of the VRA that were eliminated in 2013. Moreover, the House recently passed H.R. 1, which would override many voting restrictions, such as those recently introduced in Georgia, if it passes in the Senate and receives President Biden’s stamp of approval. Regardless, if the 2020 election was any indication, Southern voting rights activists likely will remain undeterred—and may find even more success in the 2022 midterms.