Without equal voting rights, our democracy is nothing. A democracy is supposed to represent all people, and this representation happens through the act of voting. Restrictive voting rights are nothing new in the United States; restricting voters goes back as far as the country goes back. However, after the 2020 election, even more light has been brought to the voter suppression that is taking place in the United States.
Since the 2020 election, 47 states have proposed 361 bills that would restrict voting. Five of these bills have been signed into law and 55 of these bills are moving through legislatures. The majority of these bills are aimed towards absentee voting; this comes as no surprise considering the extreme number of falsehoods that were perpetuated by Donald Trump and his supporters during the election.
Bills in both Georgia and Iowa have been signed into law that make absentee voting even harder. These bills include laws such as requiring voters to provide a state identification number or a photocopy of an identifying document with their absentee voting application, not allowing election officials to affirmatively send out ballot applications, allowing less time to apply for absentee ballots, and restricting the hours of drop boxes. And these are only the stipulations that were signed into law in Georgia, in Iowa there are even more restrictions. Such as giving less time to apply for absentee ballots, limiting election officials in providing drop boxes, and restricting who can assist an absentee voter in returning their ballot.
These laws in and of themselves are extraordinarily anti-democratic. In a nation that values freedom and liberty, it makes no sense why laws that restrict an individual’s right to vote would be put in place; especially when there was no reason why these laws needed to become stricter. There was no substantial evidence whatsoever that significant voter fraud took place with absentee ballots. There was strictly propaganda perpetuated from the previous president and his supporters that led to these bills being written into law. There is no reason that the lawmakers in these states should have succumbed to signing these stricter policies into law. Falsehoods and propaganda should not be dictating the laws of this country.
However, this issue goes even deeper than simply making it more inconvenient to vote with an absentee ballot. Without the voices of the majority of citizens being heard there is no true democracy. These laws aim to limit and restrict citizens’ voices from being heard. Voting is already a somewhat difficult task in the United States, you have to register in advance and the polls are only open on a weekday when the majority of people are at work, and these laws make it even more difficult. In order to have a true democracy all voices need to be heard, and in order for all voices to be heard voting needs to be made easier for citizens, not more difficult.
