In ways that seem to be front and center. If we go back to the Jim Crow era of disenfranchising African Americans would be things like straight up intimidation. And then things that we're probably all familiar with are mostly familiar with like literacy tests like grandfather clauses that allowed whites to keep voting even as the rules changed for the African American population.
In 2016, just over half of the voting age population showed up at the polls to make their choice in national elections. Some of those who didn't vote were not politically engaged by choice, but evidence suggests that many efforts are still made to keep people away from the polls. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast. Voting rights in the United States have been contested throughout the country's history. Even landmark moments such as the passage of the 15th and 19th amendments have not stopped efforts to suppress the votes of black citizens and women's citizens who were left out in the founding documents of the nation. Today, we're speaking with two recent panelists have a discussion on voter suppression. We'll talk about efforts to keep people away from the polls in the past and in the present.
My name is DeWitt Bingham, and I teach Criminal Justice at Heartland Community College. I've been a probation officer for 33 years and criminal justice instructor for 24 years.
My name is Paul Folger, and I'm a political science professor here at Heartland. I've had that position for about 15 years. And then prior to that I was at Millikin. University down in Decatur, for about 15 years doing administrative work along with being a political science instructor down there.
Well, in addition to those duties, both of you were panelists in a recent session about voter suppression, and you talked about not only the history of voter suppression in the United States, but also how it has sort of worked out into its modern iterations. You know, I think what a lot of people think about voter suppression, I think about the Jim Crow laws following the Civil War, is that the roots of a lot of what we've seen over the last 100 years, well, I
can start with maybe some history before that, we can certainly make arguments that the Founding Fathers who put together our Constitution, were not really interested in majority rule, they were worried about the majority, they felt the majority would make a lot of bad decisions. They were especially worried that the majority of people who maybe didn't have land or didn't have wealth would use the government to play Robin Hood and take from the rich and redistribute to the poor, so harshly in an effort to stop that, you know, we have electoral institutions like the Electoral College, in olden times state legislatures used to elect our Senate. And we have systems of federalism where the state governments really get to determine the vast majority of the voting laws and rules and procedures across the 50 states. So yes, Jim Crow, it was a huge part of it. But it goes all the way back really to the founding into the constitution.
So when you talk about this concept of taxation without representation being the founding grievance on which the Revolutionary War was fought, it didn't seem to matter so much later on. Once the folks that won the Revolutionary War got to make the rules over
well, there's an old adage that history professors say that if the Brits were smart, they would have given the colonists representation, you know, one member of parliament out of the hundreds that would have been voting there, and they would have constantly been voted down on every single issue. But it might have staved off the revolution. So sure, Founding Fathers perhaps changed their mind a little bit about that once they got power. And once they started drafting their own constitution,
going all the way back to 6090. And all the way up to Jim Crow. African Americans didn't have that. Right. So it's it started way earlier than that. And then the women also didn't have a right to vote as well. I think it was 1920. Maybe that they got it became law that they could actually vote. In terms of timeline, I guess I'm thinking a little bit it had been going on for quite a while.
There's a sort of a meme that goes around. Now. This is something along the lines of if the Supreme Court has never had to grant you the right to vote, you probably are privileged in one way or another. But you know, we look at these benchmarks of amendments to the Constitution and rulings on suffrage, whether it be granting African Americans the right to vote are granting women the right to vote, but that doesn't mean that in the practice, then those people got to vote because there were various ways to prevent African American Since from voting and women from voting after these landmark points in in history, and that's, I think, where the voter suppression that we don't quite see as visibly comes into play, there are a lot of unique tricks and ways that individual state governments, and even down to the municipal levels made it very difficult for people even though they technically had the right to vote on paper.
Right. I mean, it almost seems as though it's a little more blatant today than it was back then, you know, in terms of how they're actually out in the open with it today. But I certainly would agree with that.
The five ways that seemed to be front and center, if we go back to the Jim Crow era, of disenfranchising African Americans, you know, would be things like straight up intimidation, which is what suggested we're still getting that today. It's no secret that the proud boys have been told to what stand stand back but stand ready, or whatever the phrase was the President used. And then things that we're probably all familiar with are mostly familiar with, like literacy tests, like grandfather clauses that allowed whites to keep voting even as the rules changed for the African American population. All taxes, of course, which was outlawed in the 1930s. And then an ingenious invention called the white primary that was especially useful in the south, where the Democratic Party was declared a private organization. And because it was declared a private organization, they could control who joined and who didn't join. And so of course, if you're African American, you weren't allowed to join the Democratic Party in most southern states. And if you're not a member of the party, you weren't allowed to vote in those primaries. And given the history of the region, and nobody was going to vote for the party of Lincoln, the Republicans, whoever won the Democratic primary one. And so again, African Americans were disenfranchised not allowed to participate in that particular set of elections. Now, again, most of these have been overcome and overturned by various laws up through the 1960s. But as to what suggests they're still out there, and perhaps more subtle forms, and in some not so subtle forms.
Well, can we talk a little bit about some of those laws, something that growing up in my age, I was very surprised to find out just not all that long ago, a few years ago, that some of the civil rights protections, those laws were passed. And then a few years ago, you heard many lawmakers say those protections aren't necessary anymore, and anybody that wants to vote, that couldn't have voted in the 60s in the 70s, when these laws were created, can vote and it's not a problem. Can we talk about those kinds of protections, and now that we see that is not in place that maybe was in place, you know, a decade ago?
One thing I would add, Steve, is is that that's one of the things that Senator John Lewis had been fighting for all the way to his death. We know what he actually did in terms of Selma, and Bloody Sunday, and what he did to actually get Johnson, human king and everybody else to pass the Voting Rights Act. But just recently, as he said, The Supreme Court has actually struck down some of the Voting Rights Act. And I kind of disagree with that. Because just because people can vote now, I just think that it was short sighted for for the Supreme Court and I in history, I know that they haven't gotten it right all the time. So I won't be too hard on it. But it just seems as though they their thinking was was that just because it's no more easier for us to vote now that we don't need to keep an eye on Georgia in terms of trying to suppress the vote, or we don't need to keep an eye on Texas, in terms of trying to keep people from voting. That's one thing that stands out in my mind in terms of the Voting Rights Act in particular. And I think that's one of the main reasons why they have the John Lewis 40 Rights Act, sitting on the Senate desk. Right, Mitch McConnell's best right now.
I wonder if we can talk a little bit about how needing to present ID to vote had suppressed the vote historically,
the issue with the voter ID requirements, at least in my mind is that what you're doing is you're adding another level of bureaucracy, to the process of voting. And the more levels of bureaucracy you add to the process of voting, especially newer voters who don't have a history of voting and how to navigate bureaucracies and and how to get it done. They're going to struggle with these new rules and these new ways of doing things. And it's also the case that poor people and people of color and elderly people and perhaps immigrant citizens, they're going I have a harder time with all of these bureaucratic rules as well. I can refer to listed young people on that list too. But young people are going to have a tougher time as well, both because they're by definition newer voters. And because they're so mobile, it's going to be very difficult for them to procure a voter identification cards. Now, if we took a step back and said that this was somehow implemented evenly or perfectly equally across all demographic groups, then you know, maybe you could make a case for it. But the fact of the matter is, it's not implemented evenly. People who are Democrats tend to fall into those categories I just listed. And so it's a conscious effort by the Republican Party, to try to tamp down the voting power of people who most likely would be voting for Democratic Party candidates. So when you introduce power, and you introduce partisanship into a lot of these rules and regulations, that doesn't take a big leap, to realize that this is done so that one party in power, usually the party in power in a particular state, is simply trying to maintain that power or hold on to that power. And it's pretty blatant, because, again, it said at the beginning of this,
you know, thing that I would add to that is that those voter ID laws really come into curation and and really start to manifest themselves when the Supreme Court takes over the Voting Rights Act and not realizing that something like this was gonna happen. I mean, Paul's exactly right. I just personally believe that when that happened, they were looking at, you know, African Americans and poor people, elderly, people who actually need to actually maybe mail in their ballots are, don't have the ability to get out and get an ID, or can't get an ID.
If you look in the history of the country having the ID, I think everybody now might think, Okay, well, I will have a driver's license if I'm old enough to vote. And I will have, you know, all these things that are ID, not everybody has those things now. But going back 30 years ago, it was so unevenly applied that some people could demand that people showing up to vote would have to produce four kinds of ID or different.
Well, I'm originally from the state of New York. And so I came to my voting age out there. And they're not huge discrepancies. But I was surprised at how lenient the state of Illinois was, when I came to register here, in the state of New York, you had to register, essentially, with a political party, the Democrats or Republicans or one of the other third, or fourth or fifth parties, or you couldn't participate in the primary election process. Also, in the state of New York, I think I'm correct in remembering this, you had to be registered two months, 60 days before the actual election, or you wouldn't be allowed to vote. And while you didn't have to have a photo ID at that time, and again, this is ancient history, you did I think have to have three forms of ID. So not quite the form that you mentioned. But what certainly one more than than the state of Illinois require. And then when I got my came to Illinois for graduate school, and then got my registration in order here, I was surprised at just how quick and easy it was, you know, I just needed a basically a cable bill with my name on it, and I was set to go. So. So well done, Illinois, and then Illinois continued with those processes. Now we have same day registration and voter registration. And hope I'm not stepping on some AdWords material. But right we have a day off now. It's a holiday for the election. So Illinois is it's been a pretty good states in terms of making it easy for
people to vote, at least this year, we have the day off. Well, we'll see. So I want to talk a little bit about that. And registration, because it's interesting that what is kind of considered a fundamental right of all adults, that are Americans, which isn't actually applied to all adults equally. Even now, a lot of things can restrict your right to vote, but you have to register, we take that for granted. But that seems a little odd. Really, if you are either a naturalized US citizen or a natural born US citizen, everybody is supposed to get a social security number. So you'd think that somehow that you could follow up on that in a way that they do with selective service or if it were ever to be implemented again. And, you know, we have a lot of things that people do to get those IDs that you're talking about where another thing that is in Illinois is a version of the motor voter bill where you can choose to register to vote when you get your driver's license or your driver's license renewed. it that is a controversial idea in other states. And it is not something that is equal across all states. So it's harder to vote here to get registered to vote than it really needs to be. I mean, even though it is, it's kind of easy to do, but you still have to do it. Whereas other places around the world that are democracies, you don't have to make a bunch of extra effort to have that. That what is considered a right,
yeah, I would, this is the first time that I literally have gone online, to check to see if I'm good. No, I'm registered to vote. In my mind, though, I'm hearing all this stuff. And I think that has a lot to do with the suppression, the spreading of lies, and fear and confusion is got me somebody that's been voting for, you know, 40 years, you know, going online and checking to make sure that I'm registered not once, but twice, because I hear that in the news that people are the other thing is, is that when they send out information, saying that you can apply for a melon ballot, I'm like, There's no way that I'm apply for a melon ballot. So something can happen to where I won't get the vote. I'm going right up to my Pisco on November 3, and I want to stand in a line metaphoric. I'm hoping that there's a line there's never been a line since I've been going to vote at Pisco. So I'm really looking forward to actually fellowship in But you're exactly right. I mean, in terms of actually registering that is a method of suppression in and of itself.
One of the arguments about registration that was brought up by our colleagues on the panel from ISU Professor Bill, Rob, you know, his comment and his argument, so I'll just blatantly steal it from him was that, you know, we should just have a nationally issue kind of voter ID card. And as long as you're in possession of that voter ID card, you should be able to vote in at least the national elections, the federal elections, anywhere you want. Because you are a citizen of this particular country. Now, obviously, the motor voter bill from the 90s, I think that was under the Clinton administration did help to improve the registration process, you can register in a number of more places, at least for national elections, federal elections. And a lot of states have said that, well, we'll piggyback on that. And so when you register for the national federal elections, you'll also simultaneously register for state elections. But as you mentioned, Steve, a lot of states decided not to piggyback on that. And it's a separate registration for the national elections, federal elections versus the state elections. There's something of an irony in political science that we kind of thought that if we could get everybody registered, or as many people registered as possible, then the voting would take care of itself, because it seemed everybody who was registered or, you know, very high percentage of people who were registered, actually went on and followed through and voted. But what we found is, as the registration requirements became easier to navigate throughout the country, at least comparatively easier to navigate, the voting numbers didn't necessarily go up as much. And so there's still a gap between the act of registering to vote, and the actual act of showing up to vote. So my caution would simply be is that we've got to manage both of those things. If we really want to have high turnout, yes, you have to be registered to vote. But just because you're registered, especially now, doesn't mean that you're going to vote. So we've got to encourage people to vote and find ways that we can reduce the burdens. For people who choose to vote after the register,
you raise an interesting point. And this actually goes back to something to wit said a little bit ago that the fact that there might be a concern about the process of mailing in your ballot, during a pandemic, people might choose to do that, because they're worried that they'll be in this place where they're going to spread the virus or get the virus or something like that. And I've heard this from several people, they're like, No, I'm going to show up in person because I don't have confidence in the way that the mailing ballots systems working. And I just wonder if entering doubt about your vote, or your ability to vote is part of the voter suppression picture, right? Because if somebody goes in there and says, you know, I don't know about these mailing ballots out at the, you know, I heard somewhere that they're, they're not going to count or I know that if you mail it in after a certain amount of time that they might count or I heard that they're, you know, counted twice or counted wrong or something like that. That's all a subtle form of suppression as well, because the system we should have confidence in our system actually. working right?
Absolutely. Well, and, again, I don't think it's so subtle, you know, it's an obvious attempt to discredit the vote by mail process. And, you know, do it's a personal anecdote, and I have to say I'm kind of there with them, shows that it's working. People don't have confidence in it, at least some people don't have confidence in the mail system, or the mail, vote by mail system, I should say. And, therefore, if it's difficult for me to show up in person on the day of the election, then this vote by mail system, I may reject because I don't trust it. Or I may just say my votes not going to count, so I won't use it. Now, I hope that doesn't happen. As somebody who is a believer and lots and lots of people voting regardless of whom you vote for, I hope that we do have enough trust in the system that would work. But, you know, heavens went when leaders of political parties stand up and say the system can't be trusted. And oh, by the way, we're going to have massive cutbacks in the post office system. While we're trying to figure this out. For the first time, it's not a good message to be sending out to the American voter at this particular point in time,
if you think about two previous elections, there are dirty tricks to get played to, you know, robo calls, they have pollsters that call you up and say, make sure to show up on November 11, or the vote. You know,
I love that one. Steve, that's that's my all time favorite one. Oh,
and that might have started as soon as Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone, but it's been going on as recently as just the last couple of years, there are a lot of ways that people try to trick people to invalidate their vote. Yeah,
I mean, we talked about the robo calls, informing people that if they actually mailed in, they're both they could be subject to going to jail, and scaring them. And then state committees actually trying to pass laws to subpoena the ballots as we're actually voting. So we know that, like you pointed out, see that the ultimate goal is to actually confuse cause fear to actually diminish the vote, if they're not going to vote for the person that they're targeting, then they just want to stay home. But one of the interesting things to Paul's point that I heard on CNN this morning was is that I think it was Travis County in Texas, they have 1.3 million people that live in that county, and 97% of the people are registered to vote. And so it could have a opposite effect. And so then it becomes, like Paul said, trying to get those people to actually, you know, show up. So I mean, if you got 97. And I think they said 30% of the people that voted so far, because they set a record on the first two days, were under 30 and 40%, under 40. But 20% of the people that actually voted in that county on in the first two days, were people who never registered to vote before. So it could be sort of like the Michael Jordan effect, you tell me that, you know, I'm not good enough to win a championship. I'm gonna show you I'm gonna do what it takes. I'm gonna get my other teammates involved or what, whatever I need to do in order to actually make that come to fruition?
Yeah, we'll do it. When I vote this year, I'm going to be wearing my North Carolina shorts underneath Oh, just like Michael Jordan used to. But I just wonder if there are things that we need to think about on a local level, because I wasn't sure where you're going with that population. Anecdote at first do it because I know that there are some places that have a huge number of registered voters. But the polling locations themselves, the places that you go to vote aren't distributed to accommodate where the voters are, or they have one polling place where there's a huge amount of the population and then 10, where they're, you know, spread out across suburbs or something like that, where the population isn't as much do we see that? Who determines where the polling locations go in individual areas? And is that a form that historically has been a way that they've used to suppress the vote?
Absolutely. I mean, the fig leaf that the local governments who are responsible for allocating the polling places hide behind is well, you know, budget, it costs money to run these elections, it costs money to run these polling places, you have to have a sufficient number of volunteers or low paid officials who are going to staff these polling places. And so if we don't feel we can have too many of them and without raising taxes or something like that, then yeah, they're going to be limited in number. And then where are they put them? Well, you know, they get to decide that the election officials and if they are of one political party or the other and they have a vested interest in keeping the power that I talked about earlier. And then they will distribute those polling places strategically, in a way that advantages their side and disadvantages the other side, but it's always the fig leaf. Well, you know, we don't want to raise your taxes, and you don't want to have your taxes raised to you. And there's an element of truth to it, which is why it's people give them a pass, or at least some people give them a pass on it. But it's still the idea that you're strategically manipulating the system in order to advantage your political party or your power structure, at the expense of everybody else. You know, I think we need to be aware of of what the potential issues are. And I guess one other thing I would add to this as a local voter here in McLean County, Illinois, if you feel that, or they tell you that your vote isn't going to, you're not going to be allowed to vote because of a registration issue, or some other kind of issue, you have the right to ask for a provisional ballot. And so if they're not going to let you vote, ask for a provisional ballot. And then they will tell you what you have to do, I think it's within 10 days. But they will tell you what you have to do in order to allow for that ballot to count, whether it's a form of ID or an address checker, something like that. Now, again, as I mentioned earlier, thankfully, Illinois isn't, at least my experience is in a horrific state in terms of those kinds of, we're not going to let you vote problems. But if you do encounter that provisional ballots, that's what you can ask for. And if you fulfill their requirements within about 10 days, then your vote will count. So that's a good thing.
And something like that can even just help to allow you to vote if there's some sort of mistake, right? You know, if there is a clerical error and your your information isn't at your polling place, or you went to the wrong one somehow, and they can't tell you to go the right one, the provisional ballot does get counted. It might not get counted on election night. But it does get counted in there, we'll get
counted. Absolutely, Steve, in regard to what Paul is saying is that, you know, don't be intimidated, you know, take advantage of the opportunity to vote because many people have bled and died to give you the right to vote. And both Paul and I talk about political criminals and a political crimes and domestic terrorist and international terrorism. I guess wanted to say that because one of the scariest things has been this thing with Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Because to me, that is actually domestic terrorism that has taken place. Now I'm ending on something gloomy now. What I'm trying to end, but I think work country is it's imperative that we go out and vote and we actually express, you know, use our vote to express our political desires. Right, and I'll just leave it there.
Well, I think one thing other thing I am sure that YouTube will agree with as well is there's so much of our media industry is involved in watching the race, you know, watching the polls was coming back for here or there before there is a single vote cast, they, they tell you who the winner might be, or that one particular area, one candidate or another is leading or falling behind by a huge amount. And what we saw in 2016, is that those predictions didn't necessarily play out. And they don't always play out. And honestly, it doesn't matter until people actually go and cast their ballot, no matter what somebody might say, in a telephone pole or something ahead of time, you can't hope you say, Oh, well, somebody else will take care of that. I don't need to do that.
But if I can defend, at least the political science folks who do that stuff for a living, then that the national polls in 2016, actually were within the margin of error, they predicted that Clinton would get you know, X percent, and Trump would get y percent and, and they didn't have it exactly. But they had it within the margin of error, where they had problems was at the individual state level. But in part because the margin of error when you drill down to the state level gets larger. And so even then they were still within the margin of error. But it was just that the margins of error were much larger. And so there was more of a chance that because it was so close in some of those states that could flip one way or the other. But Steve, your comment about Yeah, we don't know till we get out there and vote. That's exactly right. The best example is Florida. For those who want to go all the way back to 2000. It was something like 537 ish, give or take votes that separated Gore from Bush, and if 537 People had not voted or voted differently, or whatever, you know, the course of the world might have might have been very, very different. So
it's very true. The other thing about Illinois
when you go to the polls is we have same day registration here, Illinois. And so if you're not registered, even if you think you're registered and tell you you're not registered, then say okay, great. I We'd like to register right now and then vote. And you can do that in the state of Illinois, we have same day registration. So even if you haven't been paying attention, even if you haven't done any of the paperwork, even if you barely know what's going on and decide that you want to vote, just show up at a polling place, and they'll get you to tell the right one or tell you where he or the right one is. And then you can both register and vote right there on the same day. So I just want to make sure that we all know that
yeah, thank you, Paul. I want to thank you both for taking the time to talk to us about this. All right.
Appreciate it. All right, Paul.
Paul Folger teaches political science at Heartland Community College, DeWitt Bingham teaches Criminal Justice at Heartland. Both were panelists on the discussion, voter suppression, past and present attempts to weaken your vote. It was held in October of 2020. If you're interested in other conversations about history, culture, political science or other topics, subscribe to random acts of knowledge on Apple podcasts, Spotify, audio boom, or wherever you found this one. Thanks for listening
