Voter-Suppression Laws Should Be High on the Agenda of All Nonprofits

This year, as America celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, backroom deals across the United States are threatening the very freedoms that these milestones symbolize.

The right to vote is under attack, and it is up to all nonprofits to work to protect it. How can we expect to advance policies that improve our schools, protect our environment, and care for our elderly if we do not allow everyone the opportunity to elect politicians we can hold accountable?

Right now America is in a moment of political déjà vu. In 2008 and 2012, a black man won the White House on the back of historic African-American and Latino turnout. A generation of young, diverse, and opinionated voters found its political voice.

But just as the demographic picture begins to come into focus, the old guard is resorting to a trick first applied a century ago: using the law to suppress the vote.

In the years following the Civil War, former slaves secured the right to vote and even won a few seats in office. At the dawn of the new century, right-wing extremists set out to suppress black political power.

In 1902, Virginia passed a law that took away the vote of anyone convicted of a felony. As one delegate put it rather bluntly, “This plan will eliminate the darky as a political factor in this state in less than five years.”

In 2013, Virginia still has a law on its books that disenfranchises people who have committed felonies. It is still a cynical law, and its impact has only increased as racial disparities in the criminal-justice system have gotten worse.

But early this year, after years of public pressure and conversations with the NAACP, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell did something many did not expect: He asked the state legislature to give people convicted of nonprofit crimes the chance to earn back their right to vote.

This story tells us a few things about the state of voting rights today.

First, voter suppression is still used to achieve cynical political objectives. Second, as more people learn this fact, more people want to fight voter suppression. Third, protecting the right to vote is not a Democratic or a Republican issue; it is an American issue. And it is an issue in which nonprofits can make a difference.

In the past two years, more states have passed more laws pushing more people out of the ballot box than in any legislative cycle in the previous century. Strict laws on voter identification, cuts to early voting, and other schemes have all had the same effect: to make voting harder for minorities, the young, the old, and the poor. As with their predecessors—poll taxes, literacy tests, and the exclusion of women—these laws have been rationalized as protections to give the voting process more integrity. In reality, they have done the opposite.

The next round of voter-suppression laws is already under way. Conservative politicians made big gains in many state-level races last November. In assembly houses and state Senates across the country, an emboldened extremist element is ready to use any method possible to restrict the vote.

And with the Supreme Court set to review a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, which requires some states—mostly in the South—to get federal permission before changing election laws, one of the only federal protections against voter suppression is under withering attack.

In the face of these threats, a coalition of civil-rights, labor, and environmental organizations has come together in recent months to create the Democracy Initiative, an effort to mobilize large membership groups to fight back against voter suppression and push forward voting reforms.

These groups realize that anyone dedicated to social justice or progressive issues should be concerned about voter suppression—because the right to vote is the right upon which all other rights depend. That includes women’s rights, labor rights, environmental rights, and any other right that we hold dear.

Last year nonprofits like the NAACP learned how to fight against voter suppression: by mobilizing volunteers to challenge these laws wherever they were introduced and by educating communities about the issue.

In 2011, a poll of Minnesota voters showed that 80 percent supported a new voter-ID amendment. After months of mobilization and education, only 46 percent of voters supported the measure. It failed on the ballot.

If voter suppression reveals the worst instincts of many of our nation’s politicians, then last year’s fight against voter suppression showed our nation’s people at their best. This year, we need to ensure that voting rights remain a household issue even as the 2012 presidential race fades from memory.

At the same time that coalitions like the Democracy Initiative play defense against voter suppression, we also need to play offense to fix our elections.

Many of the ultra-conservative politicians who argue for election integrity are often right, but for the wrong reasons. Rampant voter impersonation—the thing that strict voter-ID law is designed to stop—simply does not exist.

However, outdated voter rolls, overcrowded polling places, and long lines are real. Some voters waited in line for hours after the election was called in November.

President Obama has repeatedly said that we need to fix that. Nonprofits need to push to ensure that happens.

On another front, we need to fight to expand early voting instead of cutting it. Hurricane Sandy reminded us why early voting is important in an unpredictable world. If the storm had hit just days later, it would have made an even bigger difference in the elections.

Some states have tried to slash early voting as a way to undercut the ability of blacks to vote. Groups like the NAACP will keep fighting for early voting, not just to help minorities but also to protect other people who face challenges getting to the polls on voting day.

And just as important, we need to keep up the momentum on the issue of felony disenfranchisement. If strict photo-ID laws and cuts to early voting are like Jim Crow, then felony disenfranchisement is Jim Crow. We have seen progress in Delaware, Iowa, and Virginia, but there is still much work to do.

In November 2013, there will be no national election—no galvanizing coast-to-coast event to focus the nation on images of lifelong voters being turned away from the polls by long lines and new laws.

But we cannot sit back and allow the state of our democracy to be compromised by politicians who would rather stop some people from voting than do the hard work of convincing those people to vote for them.

Benjamin Todd Jealous is president of the NAACP.