RACIAL DISENFRANCHISEMENT
BY ISAAC BROADHEAD & SETH HOLT
& DISCRIMINATION
People of color in America have been discriminated against again
and again throughout history. Although many people in America
believe that people of color are represented as equally as white
people in presidential elections, the reality is that people of color are
still being kept from voting and we need ways to fix this issue. Even
though the initial problem these problems include the fact that there
aren’t nearly enough polling booths in minority neighborhoods and
the votes aren’t counted fairly. Additionally, we could look at other
countries’ methods of voting and get ideas from them. To fix the
ever-increasing problem of voter disenfranchisement, we need to
build more polling places and eliminate the Electoral College, or at
least improve it, and implement ideas from other countries.
If we look at California as an example of when black people vote, it
doesn’t look good. In the United States we have many districts in
each state. To win a state you need a majority of district, and you
need a majority of the people within the districts. Black populations
in California are only 5% and all of their votes are wasted. There are no
districts where black people are the majority of the population and
making their votes matter with the current system we use is closed
to impossible. Because of the fact they are contained within districts
they are counted even less towards the final decisions. We need to
change our current system of counting votes in America to stop black
people from being disenfranchised.
The first solution we propose in order to improve the current situation
with voter disenfranchisement is to build more polling booths. Polling
booths are the places you go on voting day to cast your ballot
Currently, they are not efficient enough and there are ways to get rid
of the booths in certain neighborhoods. According to Sam Levine of
Huffington Post, “Election officials in a rural southwest Georgia
county are defending a plan to suddenly close seven of the county’s
nine polling places against allegations of racial discrimination, saying
the ones it wants to close are not sufficiently accessible to people
with disabilities” (Levine 2018).
Black populations in California are
only 5% and all of their votes are
wasted. There are no districts where
black people are the majority of the
population and making their votes
matter with the current system we
use is closed to impossible.
People are currently are able to shut down polling booths in the
neighborhoods they choose this should not be legal. Another way
to engage voters we would build more places to vote close to
every neighborhood we would create a new booth in every
neighborhood regardless of race, doing so would make it a lot
easier for people to vote. Denser populations will need multiple
booths so the waits are not unreasonably long, and in rural areas
it should be based on distance alone since there are less people.
So the first way we propose to fix voter disenfranchisement is to
make it required to have a certain number of polling booths near
you based on population.
Another solution to end voter disenfranchisement is to count the
votes traditionally. Instead of relying on the biased Electoral
College system, we should choose our president based on popular
vote and only popular vote. If America is not willing to abolish the
Electoral College completely, then we should definitely improve it.
Near the founding of our country, we produced a voting system
based on the choice of the people, but the truth is that the system
that the founding fathers designed is not based on the vote of the
pure opinion of the people of America, it is based on the Electoral
College. In The Electoral College system, the representative of the
state doesn’t even have to vote for the popular vote. They can vote
for whoever they want, regardless of what the people say.
Journalist Tyler Lewis from Huffington Post writes, “This is
because under an Electoral College voting process, an individual
vote is only as valuable as its ability to influence the majority vote
of a state. Why? Because you are not casting a direct vote for
President; the electors are” (Lewis 2018). The Electoral College may
be important for equal representation of all the states, but, really,
when it comes to equality, abolishing the Electoral College would
be the right choice. “Each individual vote in Wyoming counts
nearly four times as much in the Electoral College as each
individual vote in Texas. This is because Wyoming has three
electoral votes for a population of 532,668 citizens (as of 2008
Census Bureau estimates) and Texas has thirty-two electoral votes
for a population of almost 25 million. By dividing the population
by electoral votes, we can see that Wyoming has one “elector” for
every 177,556 people and Texas has one “elector” for about every
715,499” (Lewis). Even if America is not ready to abolish the
Electoral College, we should definitely improve it so that the votes
the electors put in are based purely off of popular vote.
Instead of relying on the biased
Electoral College system, we should
choose our president based on
popular vote and only popular vote.
A third idea for combating voter disenfranchisement is to
observe how other countries undergo the voting process.
Other countries use different techniques and ideas to vote and
they have systems that are way more honest and efficient than
ours. For example, TIME magazine journalist, Kate Samuelson
states, “In Canada, there’s no deadline. Citizens are allowed to
register when they arrive at the polls on Election Day. That
helped the country achieve a 68.5% turnout in its 2015 federal
elections, compared to around 57% in the U.S. in 2012.” She also
says, “In France, citizens are automatically registered to vote
when they turn 18. In Sweden, eligible voters are registered via
tax registration rolls.” Not only should we register people to
vote automatically, we should also allow them to register on
Election day so there’s less confusion and hassle. Another idea
we could put into place is shortening the campaign time. “The
2016 election will have lasted nearly 600 days by the time polls
close on Nov. 8. By comparison, Canada had its longest
campaign season in recent history last year, and it lasted just 11
weeks. In Japan, elections last just 12 days” (Samuelson). If we
take these ideas from other countries, then we can form a
better voting system and fight voter disenfranchisement.
In conclusion voter disenfranchisement is still an issue for black
communities in the United States. We came up with several
ways to fix this issue, more polling booths, abolishing the
electoral college. We know these are issues because of the way
black people aren’t as well represented in elections and votes
that use the electoral college. This topic is immensely
important, almost all votes in california from black people do
not matter because of the places they live and the way that
districts are drawn. This means that they are underrepresented
and are unable to have their opinions heard as easily. Many
people might believe that people of color are represented as
equally as white people but that is simply not true.