The assault on the Capitol as a violent rejection of the empowerment of minority voters.
By: Jenny Manrique
Despite historic voter turnout on November 3 and January 5 in Georgia, voting rights advocates warn that last week’s storming of the federal capitol is a backlash against the growing empowerment of minority voters.
They also urged to avoid complacency after Joe Biden’s rise to the White House and to monitor the harmful effect that disinformation will continue to have on their efforts to heal the country.
Ethnic minority voters played a key role in this process: not only did they go to the polls en masse, but they did so in the midst of a pandemic and multiple assaults on their right to vote. This fact is not disconnected from the insurrection that occurred on January 6.
“We should not view the unrest as an isolated incident, but as a broader effort from the halls of state and federal government to undermine the will of the people,” Judith A. Browne Dianis said at a news conference organized by Ethnic Media Services. , civil rights attorney and co-director of the Advancement Project. “These riots were motivated by the same undemocratic sentiment that inspired legislators to challenge the November election results (before the courts) on the basis of unfounded conspiracies, lies and misinformation about electoral fraud, perpetrated specifically against ethnic communities.”
For Browne Dianis, Wednesday’s attempted insurrection that left five dead and 12 wounded is reminiscent of the political violence of the Age of Reconstruction, fueled by “racism and hatred” from those who feel they are losing power in the country, seeing a “growing majority” of ethnic voters.
“They came carrying Confederate flags with the idea that the Confederacy would rise again,” said Browne Dianis. “The police response to that moment underscores for us the unequal treatment of people in this country,” the lawyer added, referring to the lukewarm response of the police on Capitol Hill to the use of military force to disperse the protests of the movement Black Lives Matter.
The last elections were the most voted in the history of the country, with a record number of ethnic voters in cities such as Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Detroit and Atlanta.
This despite strict voter identification laws in states like North Carolina and Georgia, and attempts by local legislatures like Pennsylvania and Michigan to toughen standards for signature matching on the ballot.
This despite the complications for homeless people or in unstable homes who cannot provide an address at the time of registration and that with the eviction crisis caused by the pandemic, increased dramatically.
This despite the redistricting that has allowed the Republican Party to draw its jurisdictions to its liking so that ethnic voters are excluded, and thus be elected by majority white voters.
Outside the Constitution
“The right to vote does not live explicitly in the Constitution and what we hope is to be able to reach a point where it is recognized in the Constitution so that when we file lawsuits, the courts treat it the same way they treat the First Amendment,” said Browen Dianis, who worked with Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Durbin on Joint Resolution 75 that seeks to guarantee the universal right to vote, even for people with felony convictions.
Congress is also expected to discuss the law promoting the right to vote of John Lewis, which seeks to restore the full protection of the original bipartisan Voting Rights Act of 1965. This law was seriously affected by the 2013 Shelby County decision that allowed several states to pass voter suppression laws without any prior authorization, impacting disproportionately to minorities, the elderly and the young.
The John Lewis Act comprises a list of seven categories of voting rights changes that states can only make with federal authorization, (for example moving ballot boxes) increased notice and wait requirements, and a force of federal observers to protect the vote, he explained. Myrna Perez, Director of the Elections and Voting Rights Program of the Brennan Center.
There is also the bill HR1 which promises to reduce the administrative hassles of elections and the influence of large amounts of money on politics.
Perez explained that while the pandemic put barriers to voting in person, 35 states changed their rules to make voting by mail or absentee easier and more affordable. Activists, lawyers, athletes, celebrities, and people from all walks of life lobbied the institutions to widely guarantee the vote.
“We won an election despite incredibly powerful forces that wanted to prevent ethnic voters from participating,” added Perez. “Barriers that black, brown and Asian communities have to deal with all the time… suddenly, due to the pandemic, they spread to communities that are generally not disenfranchised, and people started to notice that there are a lot of cracks. in the system”.
The Brennan center identified 340 cases in which election results were demanded, most of them about the presidential election that failed in their attempt to flip the results.
But while there were no organized attempts to sabotage the elections, “we did have a lot of what I call random idiots with guns and trucks blocking access to the polls, scaring voters and threatening them at much higher rates than I have seen. before, “said Perez. There were also death threats against electoral administrators.
The Latino vote
As new citizens increased their participation, in several places such as Georgia, materials in Spanish or Korean were made available for the first time, but not bilingual staff to help immigrant voters.
“As we become more and more successful (as voters), there are more repressive mechanisms, sometimes very subtle, sometimes less subtle,” said Gabriela D. Lemus, president of the Board of Mi Familia Vota (MFV), a organization that promotes voting in states with high Hispanic populations such as Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and Texas. In 2020 MFV launched a $ 10 million campaign called #BastaTrump, which extended his work to the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia.
Their efforts were successful: an estimated more than 14 million Hispanic voters voted in the presidential elections, 8.6 million did so during early shift, and 2.4 million were new voters.
“As a group (Latinos) we are low-propensity voters and we don’t need to be discouraged any more,” Lemus said. “But the level of misinformation is extreme, especially in Spanish-language media that are sometimes not as regulated by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) as English media. That’s something we struggle with regularly. ”
The panelists insisted that to combat this structural racism that permeates the elections, it is necessary to invest in voter education with a focus on new citizens, in closing the digital divide in marginalized communities and in having contingency plans to shield the process from extraordinary situations like a pandemic.
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