Why It's Harder to Vote in 2016

A 93-year-old woman in North Carolina who has faithfully voted her entire life was turned away at the polls this year because she didn't have an acceptable photo ID.

A Texas man who works at the Department of Homeland Security was told his government-issued TSA badge wouldn't suffice when he went to vote. A highly motivated college student, also in Texas, who had volunteered to help register other people to vote, was herself barred from voting in the Super Tuesday primary because her out-of-state drivers license and Texas student ID weren’t enough to let her vote.

Voter enthusiasm is high this year but a raft of new laws, put in place since the last presidential election, are creating obstacle courses for new and old voters just trying exercise their right to enter the poll booth.

Signs of hope are on the horizon, however. On Tuesday, a new Voting Rights Caucus in Congress was launched to ensure fair access to the polls. That same day, Ohio’s restrictive new voting laws were struck down.

Court passes the ball to Congress; Congress fumbles

Since the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a key section of the nation’s landmark voting rights law in 2013, many states have passed strict new election laws. Supporters of those laws say they’re necessary to prevent voter fraud.

“There are more examples of shark attacks in the United States and exploding toilets than there was of voter fraud,” said Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA) Tuesday. “And if we’re going to solve problems that we have in this country first, let’s ban shark attacks and exploding toilets, because clearly they’re more of a problem than voter fraud."

In Larsen's home state of Washington, voters can cast their ballot by mail – a system that clearly can’t function with a voter ID law in place.

Critics say voter ID laws and many of the other new restrictions keep legitimate voters from voting – particularly poor people, people of color, and those who live in rural areas.

“I thought the right to vote was so sacred in this country that we were moving on to other issues,” Rep. Larsen said. “But we’ve had to move back in time to fight this fight for the Voting Rights Act.”

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 had ensured that state and municipalities couldn’t put barriers in the way of people who wanted to vote – barriers not unlike the literacy tests or poll taxes of old. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act prevented jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination from making any changes to their voting laws without federal approval, or “pre-clearance.”

The Supreme Court didn’t rule that the law was unconstitutional, but found that the formula for deciding which places did and didn’t require pre-clearance was outdated. The challenge then fell to Congress to enact a fix so that voting rights protections could stay in place.

But Congress did nothing.

Several states, on the other hand, acted immediately to enact new barriers to voting that they couldn’t implement under the Voting Rights Act.

New laws in Ohio, Georgia, Virginia...

This is the first presidential election since the ruling and the first major test of new voting restrictions in 17 states. (You can check them all out in detail here.)

On Tuesday, a judge in Ohio ruled that the state’s 2014 voting law erected unconstitutional barriers to voting, including the elimination of the so-called "Golden Week," during which people could register and vote by absentee ballot the same day. The law had reduced the early voting period and set the start of absentee voting the day after registration closed, among other things. Ohio wasn’t covered by the Voting Rights Act, but its Republican-dominated legislature had jumped on the bandwagon as other states started passing new voting laws.

Georgia now requires proof of citizenship and has shortened its early-voting period from 45 days to 21 days. In Virginia, you have to show photo ID, and there are new restrictions on Get-Out-the-Vote groups that collect and submit voter registrations.

…Texas…

The very day of the Supreme Court ruling, Texas implemented a voter ID law that legislators had been trying to put into effect since 2011, but were blocked by the Voting Rights Act. Three courts have struck the law down, but it’s still in effect while appeals are pending.

“The court found that African Americans and Latinos were less likely to have the types of ID that Texas’ law accepts,” said Jonathan Brater of the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks voter rights issues. “And the court also found that that was tied to a history of discrimination in the state.”

Texas polling places won’t accept a student ID, even a photo ID from a public university, but they do allow a concealed carry permit. “If you look at the types of populations that have those types of identifications, there are clear discriminatory effects there,” Brater said. He said he has no objection to putting protections in place to make sure people are who they say they are when they show up to vote, but these laws are too burdensome.

Elderly people also had a hard time voting if they no longer had a valid driver’s license. (Your photo ID can be no more than 60 days out of date in Texas.)

These laws have popped up most frequently in states with high African-American and Latino populations -- groups that are less likely to have driver's licenses than whites.

Going to government offices during work hours to track down birth certificates or other documentation in order to get an acceptable ID can be especially burdensome for low-income people and those who don't drive. Studies show Latino and African-American voter turnout is lower in states with strict voter ID laws than those without.

Latinos and African Americans disproportionately vote for Democrats. Voter ID laws and other voter restrictions are disproportionately championed by Republican-led legislatures.

... and North Carolina

Virginia, Georgia, and Texas had been specific targets of the Voting Rights Act because of their history of enacting discriminatory voting laws. Other states, like North Carolina, weren’t named in the Voting Rights Act themselves, but several of the state's municipalities were, effectively blocking the state from passing new voter laws without federal approval – until now.

The flurry of restrictions passed by North Carolina soon after the Supreme Court ruling are among the most alarming to voting-rights advocates. Voters can no longer register to vote at the polls. The early voting period has been cut to just 10 days. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds can no longer pre-register. A strict new voter ID law has been softened to allow voters to use a provisional ballot if they can't present an accepted ID.

The result: North Carolina’s primary was marred by long lines and confusion over requirements. To make matters worse, poll workers weren’t always well trained on the intricacies of the new laws, resulting in uneven enforcement throughout the state.

What's the impact?

There are a lot of people voting this primary season — though "a lot" for a primary means 11.7 percent of eligible Democrats and 17.3 percent of eligible Republicans.

Donald Trump's presence in the race, especially, has motivated large numbers of people to turn out, whether to vote for him or against him. Several states have seen a spike in voter registrations and there are some states where it is easier to vote this year.

But impressive primary turnout numbers may be obscuring the fact that many people are staying home or being turned away because of new voter ID laws and other restrictions in some states.

"People are hearing about laws that might prevent them from being able to vote and they're not turning out," said Chris Melody Fields of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "And that's a hard number to measure, if people aren’t going to vote because they think they might not be able to."

If some of the lawsuits over these new laws are definitively decided in the next few months, some restrictions could ease before the general election.

Fields and Brater are working to ensure better training of election officials and poll workers so enforcement will be consistent. They and other advocates are doing the usual voter education work of making sure voters know where their polling place is, what time it closes, how they're going to get there, and what documentation they need to bring.

Congressional Democrats try again

Tuesday morning, 48 members of Congress – including several members of the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses who said they wouldn’t be in Congress were it not for the Voting Rights Act – formed the Congressional Voting Rights Caucus. Congressional caucuses don’t do much, but they can formalize lawmakers’ focus on a particular issue.

In this case, the Caucus is determined to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act, which was introduced last year on the second anniversary of the Supreme Court decision. The bill would redesign the formulas for determining what jurisdictions require pre-clearance for voting laws. The law has 171 co-sponsors, but not a single Republican.

In the year since the Voting Rights Advancement Act was first introduced, Caucus members say, House Speaker Paul Ryan has done nothing. They’re hoping to get the bill moving and passed before the November election.

More bills to that end are expected to be introduced next month on the third anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling.