In his article, “Voter-Suppression Tactics in the Age of Trump,” Jelani Cobb argues that the recent suppression of minority votes is directly correlated to the Trump Administration’s rhetoric of xenophobia. Although poll taxes and literacy tests are a thing of the past, recent political actions, particularly those in the governor’s race in Georgia that actively aimed to diminish African American and Asian American votes, have resurfaced concerns of voter suppression that disproportionately affect minority voters. Trump’s constant racist remarks, such as referring to African and Caribbean countries as “shithole countries” and implying that Democrats were accountable for the Honduran migrant caravans heading towards the U.S. because they “figure everybody coming in is going to vote Democrat,” have normalized xenophobia and prejudice against minorities. The Trump Administration’s stance on immigration and voter suppression has echoed across states, causing voter access to quickly become a national crisis.
Collective action problems occur when a group would be better off if they cooperated, but individuals do not have an incentive to cooperate as long as others continue to cooperate. This problem is compounded when individuals’ contributions are negligible, and the group is sizable. Voting is a perfect example of a collective action problem: it is costly, as it takes both time and effort, and the chances of a single vote flipping an election are extremely low. This leads to the paradox of voting, or the Downs paradox, which states that the cost of voting outweigh the benefits, hence, voting is irrational. This creates incentives for people to free ride, meaning they benefit from others’ efforts to vote without actually voting themselves. This leads to the question why people vote in the first place. First, people vote because they tend to overestimate the extent to which their contribution will make a difference in the election. Although a single vote is insignificant, myopic contributions add up, making a significant difference. So, despite the insignificance of our individual votes, as citizens, collectively, it makes sense to vote. Second, organizations can help overcome these collective action problems by mobilizing people to get out and vote.
In “Voter-Suppression Tactics in the Age of Trump,” Cobb mentions a nonpartisan group, Black Voters Matter, that aims to mobilize black voters by increasing voter registration and expanding voting access within the black community. In mid-October of this year, officials in Jefferson County, Georgia attempted to suppress minority votes by ordering a group of black senior citizens that were being transported by Black Voters Matter to an early-voting locality. Similarly, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp, suspended over fifty thousand voter registration applications for minor mistakes through the “exact match law,” which requires an exact match across all documentation. Thus, something as small as a missing hyphen could suspend an application. This is an extension of sorts to the voter identification laws in the United States, which require citizens to provide official identification before they can vote or even register to vote. Voting is a civil liberty since it is a basic right guaranteed to all American citizens through the 15th amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Although not explicitly stated, Cobb’s article, when viewed through a political participation framework, clearly suggests that voter identification laws tend to disproportionately affect minorities and poor people. This means that although the Constitution guarantees the right to vote, voter ID laws can work around it. Proponents of voter ID laws claim that requiring voters to have an official photo ID, are necessary precautions to reduce fraud, yet studies show that, on average, racial and ethnic minorities have less access to these types of IDs. Nevertheless, it has been found that there is no evidence that voter ID laws have prevented voter fraud.
This article relies on various examples about recent voter suppression to support the argument that the Trump Administration’s xenophobic rhetoric is creating ripples of prejudice that are placing a “white thumb on the demographic scale” through limiting voter access. Cobb details several significant examples of empirical claims. For example, in Georgia, African Americans made up 70% of the suspended applications because of the exact-match law, despite the fact that they only represent 32% of the state’s populate. Furthermore, in Atlanta, the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center brought to light that even though they had registered to vote, many of their clients, who are naturalized citizens, were not on the voter rolls. The Brennan Center for Justice even reported that in 2017, ninety-nine bills in thirty-one state legislatures were introduced, with the objective of reducing voter access. These claims all involve contemporary facts about voter access. While the author doesn’t always include links to sources, presumably all of this information is verifiable. The Associated Press confirms that Kemp’s office placed 53,000 voter applications on hold, and 70% of the applicant suspensions were black would-be voters. While this evidence is helpful, it would be useful to know more about the Justice Department’s overall approach regarding voter ID laws, as well as how voter suppression directly helped Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election. Additionally, the article mentions state laws that prevent six million Americans who have been convicted in the past from voting; Cobb could elaborate on this and perhaps add some statistics regarding their political affiliation and a projection of how it would have reflected in the midterm elections had they been allowed to vote.
In this article, the implicit normative claim is that voting rights “should” be protected and voter access “shouldn’t” discriminate against racial or ethnic minorities, which has become increasingly common during the Trump Administration. For example, in response to an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts that claims “discrimination still exists, but not sufficiently to warrant the ‘extraordinary’ remediation measures that the act imposed on the states of the former Confederacy,” Cobb questions “how much discrimination there has to be before you can justify protecting voters.” This disregards the voter protection measures currently in place, like the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act of 1984 and, more importantly, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In recent years, there has been a spike in voter mobilization efforts, including voter preregistration and even the Taylor Swift effect on voter registration. Despite the fact that voting is costly, people still want to go and cast their ballots on the off-chance that their vote will make a difference. In “Voter-Suppression Tactics in the Age of Trump,” Jelani Cobb weaves contemporary and historical examples of racial and ethnic minority voter suppression to show that through their xenophobic agenda, the Trump Administration is resurfacing the same mechanisms to disadvantage minorities that were once commonplace in the era of Jim Crow laws.