Debating Democracy: Voter Accessibility in the Era of Fake News
Overview
In Democracy in America, Alexis
de Tocqueville (1835, 1966) concluded, “Once a people begins to interfere with
the voting qualifications, one can be sure that sooner or later it will abolish
it altogether” (pp. 52-53). Yet enfranchisement in the United States has ebbed
and flowed over more than two centuries of legislative action—much at the level
of the states—that has removed property qualifications, added educational
restrictions, enforced and removed literacy and language barriers, and revised
the age of citizenship ever downwards. During the 2020 presidential election,
held amidst the global Covid-19 pandemic, the tide of voting was caught between
those advocating for greater voting security and those wanting to reduce ballot
box barriers. The following documents enable an exploration of these opposing
viewpoints.
The Call for Greater Voting
Security
In claiming that greater voting security
is necessary, advocates argue that voter fraud is already happening, but is difficult
to detect and prosecute. Kris Kobach, the former Secretary of State of Kansas
and Chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, writing in the Washington Post
(2011), claimed, “The vast majority of the cases [of voter fraud] were never
investigated fully because Kansas county attorneys lack the time and resources
to pursue voter fraud at the expense of other criminal investigations.”
Additionally, Kobach criticized data from New York University’s Brennan Center
that indicated small percentages of voter fraud because “most forms of voter
fraud are extremely difficult to detect” and the percentage of fraudulent votes,
however small, may be significant enough in particularly close races (Kobach,
2011). To further enhance voting security, Kobach suggested that “photo ID
requirements are a reasonable way to secure our elections” (2011). Hans A. von
Spakovsky (2013), a senior legal fellow with the Heritage Foundation, elaborates
on Kobach’s suggestion by noting that the Supreme Court has upheld voter identification
requirements and that “the vast majority of Americans have a photo ID” making it
“a basic step that is neither discriminatory nor unconstitutional” but “just
common sense.” In short, those advocating greater voting security argue that
voter fraud, while difficult to detect and prosecute, exists, presents a threat
to the democratic process in close elections, and can be resolved by voter identification
requirements.
Caleb Morrison and Hans A. von
Spakovsky (2019) reiterated these claims more recently in reaction to a
comprehensive study of voter identification laws and voter participation
conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Reiterating that “election
fraud often goes undetected,” Morrison and von Spakovsky interpreted that
findings of the National Bureau of Economic Research as concluding that voter identification
laws had “no significant change in turnout” (2019). Interestingly, the report
issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research also concluded that “strict
ID requirements have no effect on fraud—actual or perceived” (2019). Rodney
Davis, United States Representative for Illinois and the former ranking
Republican member of the Committee on House Administration, concluded that
voter identification laws needed to be strengthened particularly with the
increase in absentee voting during the 2020 election. He claimed, “These
harvesters picking up ballots don’t have to show an ID, they don’t have to be a
citizen, and they don’t have to be eligible to vote” (2020). The argument for
increasing voter security through voter identification programs, therefore, has
remained remarkably consistent in claiming that voter fraud is difficult to detect
and prosecute, but that requiring identification prevents fraud, while not
negatively impacting marginalized Americans.
Reducing Barriers to Voting
Arguments for reducing barriers
to voting emphasize the absence of evidence for voter fraud, the historic prevalence
of discriminatory voter registration practices, and the importance of enabling
representative democracy. Joshua F. J. Inwood, an associate professor at Penn
State, and Derek H. Alderman, a professor at the University of Tennessee, have
argued that decisions to close polling places or to limit operational hours at
polling places in historically Black communities constitutes a 21st
century poll tax on voting (2020). In their argument the new poll tax is paid
in time as these closures have created up to a 29% increase in the amount of
time a person needs to vote. As the authors concluded, “The U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights, a bipartisan independent study group started in 1957, found that
states claimed polling-place closures were intended to save money, centralize
voting operations, and complying with Americans with Disabilities Act – but
really the goal was reducing voter turnout, particularly among minority voters
who were historically disenfranchised” (2020). Furthermore, the increases in
voting time were concentrated in communities where the majority of people
worked for hourly wages rather than more affluent areas where income was earned
through contracted annual rates.
Absentee ballots—the ability of
voters to participate in the electoral process by mail—has been heralded as a critical
solution by those advocating a reduction in voting barriers. Ronald J. Krotosynski
(2020), advocated that even after the Covid-19 pandemic receded that Congress
should mandate “nationwide vote by mail” in order “to ensure that all citizens
may exercise their right to vote.” Stan Veuger, a resident scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute, argued that Oregon’s statewide absentee ballot
program demonstrated how voting by mail increases voter participation in the electoral
process (2020). Similarly, Phil Keisling, the former Secretary of State for
Oregon charged with the statewide absentee ballot program, concluded that “our
shared goal should be the participation of as many American voters as possible”
(2020). John Oliver (2020), a progressive political pundit, further explored
the debate surrounding reducing barriers to voting participation. Presenting a
variety of arguments in a point-counterpoint multimedia platform, Oliver noted
the popularity of absentee voting, the absence of voter fraud in Oregon’s longstanding
absentee ballot program, and the dangers of increasing barriers to voting. The
latter, Oliver noted, that for democracy to succeed “voting is a right that
must be easy to understand and accessible to everyone” (2020). Reducing the
cost of voting—including time—and the increasing difficulties of establishing
residency through anachronistic mailed bills can increase citizen participation
in the voting process, thereby increasing the vibrancy of American democracy.
Teaching Controversy in the Era
of Fake News
In developing a response to the
question of whether barriers to voting to should be reduced, the partisan
political divide in the United States was brought fully into focus. Sources
such as the Lucy Burns Institute’s BallotPedia: The Encyclopedia of American
Politics and Gale in Context: Opposing Viewpoints enabled my
research to extend beyond the news sources with which I am comfortable. Wayne
Journell (2019) has compiled numerous studies that conclude “that without an informed
citizenry, democracy cannot flourish” (p. 3). Building robust media literacy
exercises into civics and government curriculums that enable students to
understand bias—as in the sources noted above—and to differentiate it from false
claims (Journell, 2019, pp. 7-9). As with Journell’s construction of a scale
along which media slides from complex presentations of reality through bias to
false claims and fake news, students should be guided to understand political
issues such as barriers to voting as complex problems not readily reduced to binary
debates. Constructing such binary debates without allowing for reconciliation
and reflection exercises reifies the divisiveness of partisan politics and
creates a citizenship that understands civics as a winner-take-all struggle of
moral imperatives. Instead, students should be taught to recognize problems, the
nuance of solutions, argumentative bias, and the delicate constructions of compromise.
As Larry David’s character in Curb Your Enthusiasm (2009) laconically observed,
“A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied.”
References
Cantoni, E., & Pons, V.
(2019, February 11). Strict ID laws don't Stop VOTERS: Evidence from a U.s.
NATIONWIDE Panel, 2008–2018. Retrieved April 19, 2021, from
https://www.nber.org/papers/w25522
Davis, R. (2020, May 28).
Rep. Rodney Davis: Twitter tries to censor Trump with 'fact CHECK' but gets its
facts wrong on voter fraud. Retrieved April 19, 2021, from https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/rep-rodney-davis-twitter-tries-to-censor-trump-with-fact-check-but-gets-its-facts-wrong-on-voter-fraud
Gale In Context: Opposing
Viewpoints. (2021). Retrieved April 19, 2021, from
https://go.gale.com/ps/dispBasicSearch.do?userGroupName=mlin_c_woracd&prodId=OVIC
Graves, L. (Ed.). (2021).
BallotPedia. Retrieved April 19, 2021, from https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page
Inwood, J. F., &
Alderman, D. H. (2021, February 20). Closing polling places is the 21st
century's version of a poll tax. Retrieved April 19, 2021, from
https://theconversation.com/closing-polling-places-is-the-21st-centurys-version-of-a-poll-tax-133301
Journell, W. (2019). Unpacking
fake news: An educator's guide to navigating the media with students. New
York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Keisling, P. (2020, May
31). Thinking inside the envelope: The mail-in solution to voting during the
coronavirus pandemic. New York Daily News. Retrieved April 19, 2021,
from https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-thinking-inside-the-envelope-20200531-kyp4b4y3ljbxppawcjlmzdaobq-story.html
Kobach, K. (2011, July 13).
Voter ID laws are good protection against fraud. Washington Post.
Retrieved April 19, 2021, from
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/voter-id-laws-are-good-protection-against-fraud/2011/07/08/gIQAGnURBI_story.html
Last Week Tonight:
Voting by Mail [Video file]. (2020). United States: HBO. Retrieved April
19, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-nEHkgm_Gk
Tocqueville, A. D., &
Bradley, P. (1966). Democracy in America. New York, NY: Knopf.
Veuger, S. (2020, March
31). Time to prepare for voting by mail. Retrieved April 19, 2021, from
https://www.mercatus.org/publications/covid-19-policy-brief-series/time-prepare-voting-mail
Von Spakovsky, H. A. (2013,
September 3). Voter ID laws keep our elections secure. Retrieved April 19,
2021, from
https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/commentary/voter-id-laws-keep-our-elections-secure
VonSpakovsky, H. A., &
Morrison, C. (2019, February 27). New study confirms voter id laws don't hurt
election turnout. Retrieved April 19, 2021, from
https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/new-study-confirms-voter-id-laws-dont-hurt-election-turnout
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