Panelists discussed the negative impacts of voter suppression on members of disenfranchised demographics in America at an event hosted by the Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights on Monday evening.
The event, called “American Voter Project: The Problem of Voter Suppression,” featured Senior Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Leah C. Aden, CC ’01, Clinical Professor of Law at Arizona State University Patricia Ferguson-Bohnee, Law ’01, Senior Counsel of the Fair Elections Legal Network Jon Sherman, Law ’08, President of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition Desmond Meade, and The Atlantic staff writer Vann R. Newkirk II.
As panelists spoke on various elements of voter suppression—defined as the prevention of citizens from exercising their right to vote—the discussion centered on voter discrimination against members of Native American tribes as well as convicted felons.
Ferguson-Bohnee said that Native American tribes continue to experience voter suppression, a product of the United States’ historical and institutional disenfranchisement of Native Americans. Many Native American tribal communities, she said, lack access to fundamental resources needed to register and cast a vote.
“The right to vote in Arizona for natives wasn’t realized until 1970 with the ban of the literacy requirements,” Ferguson-Bohnee said.
Ferguson-Bohnee said that in Arizona, her primary place of work, a 2004 voter identification law failed to take into account the rural location of many tribal reservations, where many residents lack crucial means of receiving voting information, including basic mail.
“[The law] did not take into account—or they purposely excluded—the types of IDs Native Americans would have, and they assumed that everyone would have a telephone bill, property tax, or electricity bill, and here that just doesn’t happen,” she said. “We have really high poverty rates, and people don’t pay property tax on reservations … so we have people who have the right to vote who then couldn’t with this voter ID law.”
Ferguson-Bohnee has advocated for and addressed these issues by furthering litigation to approve new forms of voter ID. She also created the Arizona Native Vote Protection Project at Arizona State University, which analyzes what laws are in place, what actions counties are taking, and how to address the issue without litigation.
Discussing the disenfranchisement of felons, Meade, a former felon himself, explained that once an individual is convicted of a felony in Florida, they are essentially stripped of their civil rights for life. He specified that it can take years after completing the terms of one’s sentence to be able to apply for a restoration of civil rights, and the process can ultimately take well over a decade.
“If I’m lucky after 17 years to get a hearing, when I walk in those doors, I stand less than one percent of a chance of having my rights restored. It can be denied for any reason or no reason at all,” he said.
Meade elaborated on the implications of being denied the restoration of his civil rights. He cannot vote, run for office, or serve on a jury. He also faces obstacles in securing employment, cannot purchase a home, and is prohibited from applying to the Florida Bar Association and practicing law.
He argued that these policies are demographically targeted and create barriers which keep communities from having the agency to represent or advocate for themselves. Meade emphasized the historical roots of these policies, which have historically kept African-American people in the South from voting.
“These laws stem from the Jim Crow era and were designed to impact African-Americans and newly released slaves … but I view this issue as one that impacts all Americans and our society as a whole,” he said.
Meade has set out to tackle this issue by successfully getting enough signatures—over one million—to have a referendum on re-enfranchising felons in Florida this November.
“Nothing speaks more to U.S. citizenship than having your voice heard,” he said.
