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]]>Civitas, a St. Louis-based educational non-profit, is working with seventeen interns this summer. They are researching (a) why certain individuals do not vote and what can be done to encourage them to do so, (b) how are system of voting is changing in light of COVID-19 and countervailing forces for change, and (c) current race relations issues in the United States and around the world.
Interns were asked to explore ways in which voting rights could be suppressed. The theory is that you have to understand the problem before you can remedy it. Below are their thoughts:
Bella: If I wanted to suppress voting in today’s world, it would obviously depend on the position of power that I was in. But assuming I have total power over President, Congress, the courts, and the entire bureaucracy, and my goal is to get as few people voting as possible, here’s how I would do it.
First, I would require more in-depth applications for poll workers to get a better gauge of their personality. Did lots of optimistic, naive AP Government students apply? Count ‘em out! Any cynical, technologically inexperienced old people apply? Count ‘em in, with bonus points if they have an attitude! Maybe increase the pay rate for poll workers, to get a larger applicant pool. This way, any mishap with the ballot scanners turns into hours-long waits, with disgruntled workers and voters alike. As a result of the increased pay rate, however, many states will have to decrease their numbers of voting stations. I’ll block regulations on the spacing there. Then, I would block cases going through the courts against gerrymandering. No need to look over voting districts! In state party meetings, I would lobby against open primaries. Why not go for the most inefficient method of handling primaries: the closed caucus! Only people willing to skip work for the day in the name of politics will be willing to go to this one. At the very least, I will get open primaries changed to closed primaries, to make sure only voters registered with a party will vote. With all aspects of this plan in place, at the bare minimum I will have only the most patient and determined voters taking part in the process.
Claire St:
How I would suppress voters in today’s world:
Ethan:
The most effective way to obstruct voting is to create a process that makes registering to vote as complicated as possible. This would include adding charges for mailing, poll taxes, etc, as well as making it take a long time. If people can get past that, make it hard to access polling places by making them far from people’s homes, and keeping them far away from public transportation. If they get to the polling place, adding in extra measures like photo ID requirements and confusing ballots will discourage more people. For those who can’t make it to the polls, you could make requesting absentee ballots more complicated, or just get rid of absentee voting altogether.
Valerie: The best thing to do to rig an election, assuming you have the resources, is not to rig the vote, but to rig the factors that influence voting. The vast majority of media in the US is owned by just a few companies. As such, they all share relatively similar interests, which will affect their reporting. They are less likely to report stories that hurt their bottom line, and willing to report those that help them. For example, they may ignore stories about a primary candidate who would threaten their business winning several primaries, but push one about another, more status quo candidate winning one less significant primary, frame it as them running away with the race, and then ignore stories damaging them. This boosts their favorite candidate’s credibility, and by ignoring their opposition, many of them can be undemocratically wiped out without touching a single vote. Or perhaps they take a relatively unknown local politician announcing their candidacy, who has never held higher office, and give them disproportionate coverage, putting them in the same position as senators and former cabinet members. Of course, this isn’t something that can simply be relied on – the media reports based on their own interests, not a political party’s. Outright bribery and lies are very hard to get away with. But the interests of the media and the political establishment are often the same – the interests of the elite.
Daria:
I think there are many ways that you could subtly suppress voting in today’s world. This is already being done in the United States today, especially through voting restrictions in black or brown communities. For example, restricting the number of polling stations in areas that you do not want to vote already occurs in this country. In addition, posters could be hung up in these communities or false advertisements could be posted on social media, which has been done in the past, telling people to go vote the day after the date of an actual election, deterring even those who actually want to vote. Furthermore, a lack of transportation accessibility in predominantly black communities in the United States can also discourage black voters from going to vote and these are all combined just a few of the numerous reasons why black voter turnout tends to be lower than that of white voter turnout.
Gabe: Repress Voting
1. Make the ballots confusing, beyond normal understanding, and they must be fully filled out and complete to be counted.
2. Multi-phasal voter ID. Fake IDs are commonplace among this nation, to prove that you are who you say you are you need: driver’s license; birth certificate; social security card; and a notarized special voter’s pamphlet.
3. The special voter’s pamphlet requires an online registration process that takes 1 hour to complete and three weeks to ship.
4. You have one hour to vote. 5:00am-6:00am. If you cannot put the ballot in the counter by that time, you cannot vote.
5. Calming classical music, played at a dangerously high volume, is blasted through the voting area.
Emily:
Here’s my list of ways I think of to suppress voting in America (some are unfortunately in practice or have been proposed):
Maggie:
If you have ever seen the documentary Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook, you would have evidence to explain why voting is suppressed in the United States. Year after year, different people and groups use tricks to limit people’s votes such as voter purges, voter I.D. laws, and gerrymandering. Even legislation that protects voters has been changed, and laws have been created to further suppress votes. In order to change this, I would uphold the Voting Rights Act while strengthen it where needed as well as ensure every state is consistent in protecting voting. Voter I.D. laws should not exist as they hinder people from voting. We need automatic and same-day voter registration to enable more to vote easily. We need better absentee voting options as well as mail-in voting. We need to change Election Day to a weekend and make it a federal holiday, so we make it more accessible for people to vote. We live in a democracy, yet only half of registered voters actually vote. This is outrageous given we have the right and privilege to vote. What’s more outrageous is the fact that groups of people actively try to prevent people from voting. Every effort against voter suppression must be enacted.
Martriana:
Ways to Suppress Voting to Today’s World…
Myla:
Unfortunately, there are still ways to “legally” suppress voters in today’s world. Since Election day is not considered a civic holiday on a national level, many voters have to take time off of work without pay. There are only nine states in the United States who have the opportunity to have a day off of work to vote. However, this does not exclude these voters from being suppressed in other ways. For example, voters can be suppressed through long lines at the polls and malfunctioning machines. Others can qualify for absentee voting but they may never receive their ballot in the mail. Gerrymandering is also a huge issue in voting. District lines may be redrawn to change the demographic of voters in certain districts.
Riley:
Stephanie:
● Require an address
● Require a high school diploma or ged
● Spread out voting centers
● No criminal record- at all
● don’t advertise election
● don’t advertise deadline
● Limit voting hours
● Propaganda
Sophie:
If I was going to suppress voting, I would start by only mentioning voting in connection with fraud or other negatives like long lines or lost ballots. It would be essential to link voting and futility together to discourage voter turnout. Passing strict voter ID laws would be a necessity. If people think that their vote doesn’t matter, then I don’t have to worry about them turning up at the polls. For those who do vote, I would close polling places, insuring long lines and longer commutes for people. I would also try and delay the training of polling workers, so they were less prepared to deal with faulty equipment. Slowing the whole process down, ie taking longer to mail absentee ballots, not having the proper amount of paper ballots at a polling place, would be the name of the game. Just make voting a nuisance that requires too much time and paperwork and never leads to change, that would be how I would suppress voting.
Traditionally there are two ways to win an election (this might be somewhat reductionist but bear with me); A campaign might decide to focus on persuasion which would involve “flipping” voters who might usually support the opposition to your preferred side, a campaign might also decide to focus on turnout which would involve motivating as many likely supporters as possible to vote. However there is a little appreciated but fairly pervasive third way to win an election which is as old as America itself, voter suppression which is the act of creating barriers to an opponent’s voters being able to vote. If I were a government official from a political party that has limited support among any number of various groups but perhaps especially low-income voters, young voters, African-American, and Latino voters I might use this course of action to ensure victory and suppress voting.
Reece:
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]]>The post What to expect when you’re expecting appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>By Sarah Casteel, Clayton High School senior, St. Louis MO
While our society still faces sex-based workplace discrimination — clearly most often targeted at women — one would still think that enough progress has been made to accommodate mommies-to-be.
However, recent evaluations reveal that an outbreak of workplace discrimination complaints has occurred among pregnant women.
SEE THIS: Bobbi Bockoras, Breastfeeding Mom, Allegedly Forced By Employer To Pump On Dirty Floor – via Huffington Post last week.
Despite our celebration just weeks ago of the 35th Anniversary of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, a law which prevents employers from “treating a woman (an applicant or employee) unfavorably because of pregnancy, childbirth, or a medical condition related to pregnancy or childbirth,” women are still very much at risk of being forced to take unpaid leave, or even of being fired, because their employers will not accommodate for their relatively temporary circumstance.
Under the PDA, an employer who allows temporarily disabled employees to take disability leave or provides them with any other disability benefits must consider pregnancy to fall within these qualifications. Yet, regardless of what the law says, pregnancy discrimination persists.
Members of Congress were prompted to construct this pregnancy protection Act by two Supreme Court decisions in the 70’s:
Geduldig v. Aiello (1973) Carolyn Aiello, a California resident, was temporarily disabled due to pregnancy — but the state’s Unemployment Insurance Code denied benefits to females in this predicament. Aiello came together with other women who had been denied the same benefits and challenged this section of the Code as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Ultimately, in a 6-3 decision, the Court upheld the statute, claiming that adding pregnancy to disability insurance would be “extraordinarily expensive.”
General Electric Co. v. Gilbert (1976) Similar to the previous case, this case was about whether or not employers could legally exclude conditions related to pregnancy from employee disability, sickness and accident benefits. Disregarding the several lower court decisions holding that excluding pregnancy from a health plan violated the gender discrimination section the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Court ruled in favor of General Electric. Justice Rehnquist pointed out that — get this — pregnancy differs from other conditions because it is often “voluntarily undertaken and desired.”
Of course, this makes sense, because we know that nearly every pregnant woman consciously chose to become pregnant and desires to have a child at that point in her life. Just kidding. According to the Guttmacher Institute, between 37-70% of pregnancies in the United States are unintended.
Women complaining of this sex-based discrimination should have just gotten cosmetic surgery — at least that would have been covered by the plan. Yeah, right.
The question now is, what can we do to stop this ridiculous, antiquated discrimination from continuing?
Well, we could always move to Germany — their maternity leave plan guarantees mommy AND daddy (or, you know, mommy and mommy) a 3 year job-protected leave following the birth of their child.
Unfortunately, such a policy will most likely never be taken up in good ol’ America. However, Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania has got our backs, ladies. He introduced (and re-introduced after it died last year) the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would “… eliminate discrimination and promote women’s health and economic security by ensuring reasonable workplace accommodations for workers whose ability to perform the functions of a job are limited by pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition.” Essentially, the law would close any loophole, induced by court decisions, allowing employers to discriminate against pregnant women. The goal is not only to ensure the woman’s job safety, but to ensure reasonable accommodations while working and while on maternity leave.
So, while some of you ladies may jump at the sight of pink, our goal right now is to make sure the pink slip disappears from our country forever.
As the This Is Personal campaign claims, “No woman should have to choose between endangering her pregnancy and keeping her job.”
Click here to tell your members of Congress to support the PWF now.
Republished, by permission, from Progress Women.
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