Many people have heard of specific laws and literacy tests that prevented southern African-Americans from voting before the Civil Rights Movement, but most people are unaware of what Andrew Hacker calls the subtle laws that prevent minorities from voting today.
Hacker argues that by requiring formal photo identification such as a driver's license or passport to vote (as states have recently began to do), they are preventing African-Americans and other minorities, who are much less likely to have one of these government-issued documents, from voting.
Hacker specifically studies the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where over 53% of the black population is unlicensed, compared to only 15% of whites who don't have a license. These numbers are similar across the country, he claims. It is technically possible for unlicensed people to still get another permitted form of identification, but oftentimes African-Americans and other minorities, who are typically much more disadvantaged, do not have the resources to retrieve one of these pieces of identification.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 is another way African-Americans are being prevented the right to vote. This act requires states to keep track of their voters, and to do that they would send out letters to all their voters, and cross off the people they could not find. The people that were crossed out lived in "mostly urban and minority areas" because these people tend to move more often or not have a permanent address, and thus preventing people in these areas from voting.
Of course, all these laws are justified by the fact that it prevents fraud, which it does, but it also prevents a lot of people, especially minorities, from voting.
Why does the government make these laws? Are they really that interested in preventing fraud which could help them or are they trying to eliminate a group of voters like Hacker suggests? Are these laws fair? Are there any alternative solutions?
I do not think that these laws are indicators of racism in the voting system. I think the laws really are getting at the issue of voter fraud, and, in the case of permanent addresses, non-residents. The issue of racism does not, currently proceed in an order of government on the people, but instead the people on the government, as Hacker's other writing talked about. At most, this is a strong correlation, but there is no implication in these laws that minorities should not vote, merely and unfortunate coincidence. If anything, this is more of an issue of simple class distinctions.
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