For Black Americans, the polling station has long been a militarized space, guarded by the violence and intimidation of white supremacists. After the Civil War when freemen began amassing political power in state legislatures across the country and the Confederacy, whites used murder, rape, lynching and other forms of violence to discourage freeman from voting.
Today, conservatives are organizing another network of vote intimidators for the November election, a network that could disenfranchise millions of voters of color. As voter registration deadlines approach across the country, states must address the potential for intimidation at polling sites to ensure that all voters can safely vote in a free, fair and non-discriminatory election.
This election cycle, we must also ring the alarm around the coordinated effort to intimidate Black and Brown voters at the polls. Conservatives have invested $20 million to mobilize 50,000 volunteers in an effort to guard the vote during early voting and on Election Day in communities of color. President Trump has even called for stationing armed guards at the polls stoking widely debunked myths of in-person voter fraud. It is critical that Black and Brown voters who led national protests against state violence in 2020 are able to cast a ballot at polling locations free from hostility this fall.
Voter intimidation – the act of intimidating or threatening someone else with the goal of interfering with their right to vote – is illegal under federal law. But it wasn’t always so.
Whites – both vigilantes and those with legal authority – used voter intimidation to block access to the voting booth. When Union troops began to withdraw from the South at the sunset of Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia and others used racial terrorism to discourage Freemen and their white allies from voting. During the Civil Rights Movement, segregationists like Bull Conner likewise assaulted Black demonstrators with dogs and fire hoses to quell calls for integration and voting rights. In these historical examples, voter intimidation not only disenfranchised Black Americans, but also cost the very lives of those who sought to exercise the right to vote.
But can we do to ensure Black and Brown voters can access the polls safely?
One, we must educate Black and Brown voters so they can identify and appropriately respond to voter intimidation on the rare occasion that they witness or experience it. If someone aggressively questions you, harasses you or challenges your eligibility to vote outside of the polls, document and report the incident to an election official on-site. Request any person engaging in this behavior be removed from the polling place. Call the national Election Protection hotline (1-866-OUR-VOTE). This hotline staffed by voting rights lawyers can help you address voter intimidation in real time.
Second, advocates should work with election officials ahead of early voting to create police-free polling locations or limit the role of police at the polls. Election officials should also restrict firearms at polling sites. Police at the polls may intimidate voters who are justice-involved, while the recent killings in Kenosha, Wisconsin highlight the dangers presented when deadly weapons are brought to contested spaces.
To be sure, it is important that police are able to be quickly dispatched to polling locations in the event of an emergency, but using state and local officials should work to recruit enough poll workers to manage social distancing in long lines, control crowd flow and provide assistance to voters with disabilities or language access needs. These roles are inappropriate for law enforcement.
Finally, we must restore the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Prior to the Supreme Court’s weakening of Section 5 of the VRA in the Shelby v. Holder case, federal employees would monitor the administration of elections in states across the country with a history of racial discrimination. In 2020, it is clear that the U.S. Department of Justice to is not coming to save Black voters from voter intimidation.
It is up to the organizers, advocates, and grassroots leaders to continue the fight to vote.
Gilda Daniels is litigation director of Advancement Project National Office, the former deputy chief in the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division – Voting Section, and author of “Uncounted. The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America.”