Name: What long voting lines in the US really mean
Uploaded: 2020-09-17T18:05:05.000Z
Duration: 8 min 13 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

When Joseph Johnson went to vote in his first presidential election...

The line went this way, in front of our auditorium...

The last person at his polling location didn't get to vote until 1 am.

It was the longest line that I've waited in  in my entire life.

Some people, they were just like, "well, screw it."

This was in a heavily Democratic part of Houston, Texas.

And it was a primary election, where Democrats and Republicans were voting on separate machines.

But the county had given both parties the same number of machines to use.

Also, Texas had closed hundreds of polling locations in recent years,

meaning more people had to vote at fewer places.

This is a map of all the polling locations in Joseph's county that had reports of long lines.

And here's the percentage of nonwhite voters in each area.

Notice how most places with lines were in less-white areas?

The poll closures, and the other decisions that led to those lines,

disproportionately affected people of color.

And whether or not that was intentional, those kinds of decisions, in places like Texas,

used to be highly regulated and much less frequent.

But the 2020 election could decide whether it comes back.

This is the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

In 1965, a group of civil rights activists, including the future congressman John Lewis,

marched across the bridge, and were attacked and beaten by police.

Back then, especially in the segregated South,

there was rampant voter suppression of Black Americans.

It started back when the 15th Amendment granted Black men the right to vote in 1870.

That right was enforced by federal troops, who occupied the southern states

during a period known as “Reconstruction.”

But what happened after Reconstruction, was that the states passed a number of laws

that effectively disenfranchised African Americans.

Of course, no law could say “no Black people can vote” — it had to be a little sneakier.

Like the "grandfather clause," where you could only vote if your grandfather could vote.

Which is impossible if your grandfather was a slave.

There were literacy tests, where voters, mostly Black voters,

had to answer bizarre questions before they were allowed to vote.

Not just tests to see whether or not you could read,

but things like, could you recite the state's constitution?

And poll taxes, requiring voters, again mostly Black voters, to pay to be allowed to vote.

They selectively chose who had to abide by these rules.

In the 1950s and 60s,  Congress passed several civil rights laws

that attempted to protect voting rights, getting rid of things like poll taxes.

Still, by 1964, in Mississippi, barely 7% of nonwhite Americans could vote.

Selma's Bloody Sunday drew attention to that.

It made Americans — and Congress — wonder if local officials,

could really be trusted to enforce these new civil rights laws.

Ten days after Selma, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was introduced.

It added additional protections, got rid of literacy tests...

But it also had a way to prevent any other creative changes:

State governments had to submit their changes to the federal government for approval.

The Voting Rights Act identified parts of the country that had a history of voter discrimination,

mostly in the South, and set up federal oversight.

So if these places wanted to change anything about voting,

like enacting a new law, or closing polling locations,

it first had to get the okay from the US Justice Department, or federal courts,

Immediately, nonwhite voter registration in these Southern states grew.

Like in Mississippi, where it went from barely 7% to almost 60% in just three years.

The Voting Rights Act did what earlier civil rights laws hadn't.

But in 2013, the Supreme Court — with a majority of Republican-appointed judges —

took on a case about the Voting Rights Act.

They decided that the way the law calculated which states would have that federal oversight

was outdated and therefore unconstitutional.

"No one doubts that there is still voting discrimination in the South and in the rest of the country.

We do, however, find that the coverage formula in Section 4 violates the Constitution."

Almost immediately, voting laws that had previously been denied for being discriminatory

Literally the same day as the Supreme Court's decision, Texas did just that,

announcing a voter ID law that a federal judge had previously rejected,

because it was "the most stringent in the country,"

and “imposed strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor."

Along with other measures that had previously been stopped, like purging voter rolls,

An analysis by the Guardian looked at the 50 Texas counties

that gained the most Black and Hispanic residents from 2012-2018,

and the 50 Texas counties that gained the fewest Black and Hispanic residents.

In these counties, the combined population fell by 13,000 over that time.

And 34 of their polling places were closed.

In these counties, the combined population grew by 2.5 million people.

But 542 of their polling places were closed.

Many officials in these states say changes like these aren't intended to disenfranchise specific voters.

What we do know is that almost all these states' governments are controlled by Republicans.

And the groups who tend to be disenfranchised by these changes are more often poor people

Even when they're saying it's not, it's very hard to believe that, in fact,

about how they could minimize the Democratic Party's vote.

In the Supreme Court decision, the Chief Justice told Congress it's okay to have oversight,

"Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes speaks to current conditions."

And so in 2019, the House of Representatives did just that,