Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vogebaum. Here in the United States, the
Speaker 1: right of adult citizens to vote and elect public officials
Speaker 1: is one of our most hallowed principles, or at least
Speaker 1: that's what's taught in middle school civics classes. In reality, though,
Speaker 1: there's another tradition that goes back even further in American history,
Speaker 1: finding ways to keep people from voting, whether through our
Speaker 1: cane laws, tricks and hoaxes that prevent eligible voters from
Speaker 1: going to the polls, or even open intimidation and violence.
Speaker 1: In some ways, voter suppression, as such efforts are called,
Speaker 1: goes back to the earliest days of the country. Only
Speaker 1: six percent of the U s population was eligible to
Speaker 1: vote in the first presidential election in see. That's because
Speaker 1: most states only allowed white male landowners to vote. In
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds, the property requirements started to fade aid,
Speaker 1: and over the next century, people of color and women
Speaker 1: legally gained the right to vote, but local and state
Speaker 1: governments came up with a variety of ways to limit
Speaker 1: who actually got to participate in elections, and efforts to
Speaker 1: restrict voting continue even today. According to the Brennan Center
Speaker 1: for Justice, Aid, new York based think tank and civil
Speaker 1: rights advocacy organization. Since alone, twenty five states have passed
Speaker 1: new laws making it more difficult to vote, such as
Speaker 1: by reducing the number of polling places and the hours
Speaker 1: that they're open. One old method of preventing people for
Speaker 1: voting is to require them to pay a tax for
Speaker 1: that right, and to make it just high enough to
Speaker 1: be prohibitive. In the early twentieth century, most of the
Speaker 1: former states of the Confederacy imposed such poll taxes. The
Speaker 1: amounts weren't that high by contemporary standards. Of Virginia charged
Speaker 1: a dollar fifty per year, which is about eleven dollars
Speaker 1: in today's money, while Mississippi charged two dollars, about fifteen
Speaker 1: dollars today. Even so, the taxes had to be paid
Speaker 1: in cash, which amounted to a hardship for sharecroppers, miners,
Speaker 1: and small farmers who generally bought food, clothing, and other
Speaker 1: necessities with credit and never had more than a few
Speaker 1: spare dollars in their possession. Additionally, in Virginia and other states,
Speaker 1: the taxes were cumulative, which meant that a prospective voter
Speaker 1: had to fork over the cash for several years in
Speaker 1: a row before being eligible to register. In nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: the ratification of the twenty fourth Amendment to the U.
Speaker 1: S Constitution prohibited poll taxes, but it wasn't until two
Speaker 1: years later that the last four remaining state laws were
Speaker 1: struck down in federal court. Although outright poll taxes are
Speaker 1: now illegal, the issue of needing to spend money to
Speaker 1: vote intersects with modern tactics of forcing citizens to travel
Speaker 1: further to access their polling place or requiring voter i D.
Speaker 1: At least thirty six states now have laws requesting or
Speaker 1: requiring voters to show some form of identification, such as
Speaker 1: a driver's license or other government issued I D. Advocates
Speaker 1: of such laws promote them as necessary to prevent fraud
Speaker 1: at the polls, but critics charge that they are intended
Speaker 1: to keep young people and minorities, whom studies show are
Speaker 1: less likely to have such I das from voting. In
Speaker 1: some states, obtaining I D can cost as much as
Speaker 1: sixty dollars, and even in states where the cards are free,
Speaker 1: licensing offices are often in places that are difficult for
Speaker 1: people without cars to reach. In addition to the cost,
Speaker 1: the types of acceptable identification can be confusing too, or
Speaker 1: can favor voters of one party over another. In Texas,
Speaker 1: for example, a handgun permit is considered acceptable identification, but
Speaker 1: a University I D Card is not, and it makes
Speaker 1: a difference. A September twenty fourteen report by the U S.
Speaker 1: Government Accountability Office found that black voter turnout in Kansas
Speaker 1: dropped by three point seven percentage points more than white
Speaker 1: turnout after a voter ID law was passed, and that
Speaker 1: the number of eighteen year old voters dropped by seven
Speaker 1: point one percent more than it did for voters ages
Speaker 1: forty four to fifty three. In the post reconstruction American South,
Speaker 1: officials who wanted to keep black people from voting came
Speaker 1: up with another cleverly cruel trick. They imposed so called
Speaker 1: literacy tests, which ostensibly were intended to make sure that
Speaker 1: only voters who could read and write and thus were
Speaker 1: adequately informed, could cast ballots. But since formerly enslaved people
Speaker 1: seldom had been allowed by their owners to learn to read,
Speaker 1: the literacy tests effectively disenfranchised many of them. The first
Speaker 1: such test was created in two in South Carolina, where
Speaker 1: voters were required to fill out a ballot for each office,
Speaker 1: such as governor or senator, and then put the ballot
Speaker 1: in the correct box. The boxes were continuously shuffled to
Speaker 1: prevent those who had learned to read from helping those
Speaker 1: who hadn't yet acquired the skill. As more black people
Speaker 1: came literate, though, officials came up with even more bizarre tests,
Speaker 1: such as in Louisiana, confusingly worded instructions that the prospective
Speaker 1: voter copy out a sentence using alternating cursive print and capitalization.
Speaker 1: Some Southern states continued to use such tests up until
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, when the Voting Rights Act made them legal.
Speaker 1: Southern states came up with other tricks to make it
Speaker 1: difficult to register to vote. They required frequent re registration,
Speaker 1: as well as street addresses with names and numbers, which
Speaker 1: many people living rurally didn't have. In the North and West,
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, officials
Speaker 1: used similar tactics to keep immigrants from participating in the
Speaker 1: electoral process too. In California and New Jersey, for example,
Speaker 1: immigrant citizens were required to present their original naturalization papers
Speaker 1: at polling places. Elsewhere, authorities closed polling places and registration
Speaker 1: offices early so that industrial workers who commonly worked ten
Speaker 1: hours shifts in those days wouldn't be able to make
Speaker 1: it in time. And in New York, officials prevented Jewish
Speaker 1: people from registering by designating Saturdays and Yam Kapoor, during
Speaker 1: which Jewish religious observances take place, as registration days. An
Speaker 1: ongoing method of suppression involves pruning names from the voter rolls.
Speaker 1: Before the year two thousand presidential election, state officials in
Speaker 1: Republican controlled Florida hired a private firm to go through
Speaker 1: the states voter registration roles and delete names of people
Speaker 1: who were deceased, registered in multiple places, convicted felons, or
Speaker 1: declared mentally incompetent by court proceedings. But as a subsequent
Speaker 1: investigation by the U. S Commission on Civil Rights detailed,
Speaker 1: the hired checkers made numerous mistakes and deleted many voters
Speaker 1: who are fully eligible. The commission report doesn't specify how
Speaker 1: many voters were deprived of their rights unfairly, but the
Speaker 1: deleted voters disproportionately were African Americans who tend to vote Democrat.
Speaker 1: In the Miami area, sixty five percent of those deleted
Speaker 1: were black people, who represented just twenty of the population.
Speaker 1: White people made up only sixteen point six percent of
Speaker 1: the purge list, even though they amounted to seventy seven
Speaker 1: point six percent of the public, and in a report
Speaker 1: by the American Civil Liberties Union found that Georgia had
Speaker 1: removed nearly two hundred thousand names from the voting lists
Speaker 1: after concluding wrongfully that those people had moved. But the
Speaker 1: last tactic that we're covering today intersects with a number
Speaker 1: of other issues in equity and justice, the practice of
Speaker 1: banning felons from voting. As many as five point eight
Speaker 1: million Americans of voting age can't cast a ballot because
Speaker 1: they live in states that bar anyone with a criminal
Speaker 1: record from voting even after they've served their sentences. About
Speaker 1: two point two million of those disenfranchised voters are black,
Speaker 1: and black people are convicted and sent to prison at
Speaker 1: twice the rate of the overall US population. In just
Speaker 1: two states allowed prisoners to vote. Most of the rest
Speaker 1: allow them to vote after their sentence, parole time and
Speaker 1: or probation, or serve. In another eleven states, convicted felons
Speaker 1: automatically lose their right to vote and may only get
Speaker 1: it back under certain circumstances, after an appeals process or
Speaker 1: after any outstanding court fines and fees are paid, which
Speaker 1: can be a huge hurdle. However, this is one vote
Speaker 1: suppressing restriction that's slowly giving way. Over the last two decades,
Speaker 1: about two dozen states have changed their laws and enabled
Speaker 1: more people with criminal convictions to regain their rights. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article ten ways the US
Speaker 1: has kept citizens from voting on how stuffworks dot Com,
Speaker 1: written by Patrick J. Kaiger and Katherine Whitborn. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is production of iHeart Radio in partnership with how stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more
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