Voter suppression efforts may have
changed the outcomes of some of the closest races last week. And if the Supreme
Court lets these laws stand, they will continue to distort election results
going forward.
The days of Jim Crow are officially
over, but poll-tax equivalents are newly thriving, through restrictive voter
registration and ID requirements, shorter poll hours and various other
restrictions and red tape that cost Americans time and money if they wish to
cast a ballot. As one study by a Harvard Law School researcher found, the
price for obtaining a legally recognized voter identification card can range
from $75 to $175, when you include the costs associated with documentation,
travel and waiting time. (For context, the actual poll tax that the Supreme
Court struck down in 1966 was just $1.50, or about $11 in
today’s dollars.)
Whatever the motivation behind such new
laws — whether to cynically disenfranchise political enemies or to nobly slay
the (largely imagined) scourge of voter fraud — their costs to
voters are far from negligible.
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