The Right to Vote
“Let’s speak the truth: People are protesting because Black people have been treated as less than human in America. Because our country has never fully addressed the systemic racism that has plagued our country since its earliest days. It is the duty of every American to fix. No longer can some wait on the sidelines, hoping for incremental change. In times like this, silence is complicity.”
Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 8 of this newsletter! This week’s topic is Voting. Today we will touch on the history of voting in America and then dive into some resources to make sure you are prepared to cast your vote, whether in person or via absentee ballot. Let’s get into it!
Key Terms
Reconstruction Era (1865-1877): The turbulent era following the Civil War, was the effort to reintegrate Southern states from the Confederacy and 4 million newly-freed slaves into the United States.
The Black Codes: Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. Some examples are in Mississippi, Black people had to have written evidence of employment for the coming year each January; if they left before the end of the contract, they would be forced to forfeit earlier wages and were subject to arrest. In South Carolina, a law prohibited blacks from holding any occupation other than farmer or servant unless they paid an annual tax of $10 to $100, which was a lot of money. Some states also forbade the right to vote.
The Fourteenth Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This gave citizenship to Black people born in America.
The Fifteenth Amendment: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”— The 15th Amendment granting African-American men the right to vote was adopted into the U.S. Constitution in 1870. Despite the amendment, by the late 1870s discriminatory practices were used to prevent blacks from exercising their right to vote. State legislatures used such qualifications—including literacy tests, poll taxes and other discriminatory practices—to disenfranchise a majority of Black voters in the decades following Reconstruction. It wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that legal barriers were outlawed at the state and local levels if they denied African-Americans their right to vote.
The Nineteenth Amendment: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
Let’s Get Into It
When the United States was founded, slaves were not seen as citizens and therefore had no voting rights. The Naturalization Act of 1790 granted naturalized citizenship to “free white persons…of good character” which excluded all non-white people . States were allowed to grant voting rights at the state level, and some did, but eventually rescinded.
The 1857 Dred Scott Case upheld that Black people "are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States." After the civil war, the Reconstruction Era promised the hope of suffrage for Black men, since a woman voting didn’t even seem like a possibility, but the Black Codes continued to make this difficult and often impossible.
Eventually the 14th (1868) and 15th (1870) Amendments were passed though voter intimidation was rampant by groups including the KKK. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states — this was 95 years later.
Black women gained the legal right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920. Keep in mind the suffragettes were not allies to Black women. Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National Women Suffrage Association was quoted after Black men were given the right to vote before white women saying, “You have put the ballot in the hands of your Black men, thus making them political superiors of white women. Never before in the history of the world have men made former slaves the political masters of their former mistresses!” Susan B. Anthony was quoted saying, “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.”
The social hierarchy of America seems to demand the freedom of one oppressed group by their oppression of another. White women standing on the shoulders of Black men who stand atop Black women.
The 2020 election will be one of the most important elections of my life. The privilege to even consider abstaining from voting is not one afforded to Americans who fear for their safety, security and liberty under the current administration. Use your voice. You must vote come this election. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change we seek.”
The 2020 Presidential Election
Dates To Request + Return Ballots
When You'll Receive Your Mail-In Ballot
The earlier you request your ballot, the sooner you'll get it.
This year, a record number of American voters are expected to cast their ballots from home for the November 3 election because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
If you're a registered voter in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, or the District of Columbia, you'll most likely be receiving a ballot in the mail from your local election officials and won't need to take further action.
Tips For Voting In 2020
The Postal Service recommends that voters plan for their ballot to take at least a 14-day round trip to get to them and back, and advises voters sending their ballots back through the mail do so at least seven days before the election, but ideally sooner.
There's no guarantee that you'll get your ballot or that it'll be returned back to your election office by any specific date, or within a specific time.
Because election administration in the United States is decentralized down to the county level, the timeline for when states start sending out ballots can vary somewhat from county to county within states and may be changed due to the pandemic. When in doubt, check with your state and local election officials for more specific information.
If you send your ballot back at the last minute, you leave your vote up to chance.
Lack of funding for the Postal Service may cause issues for getting ballots. Scroll down to support the USPS.
Experts say many voters will be unfamiliar with the mail voting process and they were concerned that voters could make unintentional technical errors when marking, signing, sealing or sending a ballot, leading to their ballots eventually being rejected.
The counting could delay race calls for at least a day or two.
Facts & Figures
Kamala Harris is now officially Joe Biden’s pick for Vice President
Key issues for this election: Healthcare, climate change, immigration, student debt, gun control, the economy, racial and social justice (NY Times + Politico)
A record 76% of Americans can vote by mail in 2020 (NY Times
Resources
Next week we are going to be focusing on Language, one of my favorite topics. Having the words to articulate what you mean and what you stand for is empowering. We will also touch on the way language is weaponized against Black Americans who speak in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or “Ebonics” — a term created in 1973 by a group of Black scholars who disliked the negative connotations of terms like 'Nonstandard Negro English' that had been coined in the 1960s when the first modern large-scale linguistic studies of African American speech-communities began. See you next week!
