Long before the first ballot was counted in this election, Black voters had already lost something precious: a crucial protection against politicians trying to draw away our power.
In April, the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais gutted the Voting Rights Act’s protection against racially discriminatory electoral maps. In Louisiana, the consequences were immediate: a congressional map with two majority-Black districts was replaced by one with only a single such district. Across the country, politicians moved to surgically crack and undermine Black political power, a precursor to attacks on brown voters and the further degeneration of a functioning multi-racial democracy. Black voters came first, but Latino and AAPI and Native American voters are also in their crosshairs. Because authoritarians despise diversity, especially when we have the audacity to speak up.
The way Black Americans meet such attacks has always signaled how the nation can be saved from its worst impulses.
Now, as Americans vote in the first federal general election since that decision, how Black voters respond matters to all of us. Because authoritarians never stop at the first target, and the way Black Americans meet such attacks has always signaled how the nation can be saved from its worst impulses.
An early indication of resistance comes from Louisiana itself. Black voters accounted for nearly 32% of ballots recorded on the first day of early voting, a larger share than on almost any other opening day in the past 18 years, and Verite News in New Orleans reported that during the state’s week of early voting, “More Black voters cast early ballots this year than in any other midterm or gubernatorial election in the past decade.” According to that newsroom, the previous highwater mark was 156,000 early votes from Black voters, but, “This year, it was nearly 180,000.”
It’s not just Louisiana. According to reports across the country, voters of color are surging to the polls, led by the example of Black citizens who have seen this strategy before.
Tuesday’s turnout numbers might show unprecedented engagement, but if so, then we must resist a familiar and dangerous question: If Black voters show up en masse, do the barriers placed before them matter?
Participation does not erase discrimination. A voter can cast a ballot and still have her community divided among districts designed to weaken its influence. A neighborhood can turn out in extraordinary numbers and still be denied a fair opportunity to elect someone who will answer to its needs at the local, state and federal levels. They may start with Congress, but the effects reach deep into where we live.
The measure of a democracy cannot be how many obstacles its people manage to overcome.
Because the danger of voter suppression does not stop at the Mason-Dixon line. The evils tested in the South always migrate. Callais weakens a protection that belongs to Americans everywhere, and that is the point. Across the country, this administration is attacking both the rights of voters and the authority of states to defend those rights. No state should assume that its geography or its politics will shield it from the administration’s authoritarian project.
The defining line in American politics will not be between Democratic states and Republican states. It will be between authoritarian states and democracy states: those where leaders manipulate the rules to hold on to power, and those where the people retain the power to choose — and change — their leaders. My focus on voting rights naturally expanded to a mission against authoritarianism because the harm is not to one election or one region. Democracy is a practical tool to deliver affordability, reproductive freedom, climate action, fair immigration policy and justice. Voting is the opening act.
To those who dismiss Callais as a political maneuver and dismiss alarm at voter suppression as histrionics, you’re following their design. Authoritarians hope you underestimate their intention. Destroying our way of life does not require canceling elections. In fact, this strain of autocracy is clever. It advances by hollowing elections out — allowing people to vote while steadily limiting their ability to change who governs them. When leaders can insulate themselves from the communities they are supposed to serve, then the machinery remains while accountability slips away. Your rent rises, the price of gas gets negotiated against a data center-driven utility bill hike, and the cost of groceries gets measured against which prescription can wait to be filled. Because they know your name is not on the ballot, but your life is — and they don’t care.
Through the 10 Steps Campaign, I have worked to help Americans recognize how attacks on our rights, our institutions and our communities fit together into an authoritarian playbook — and how we can respond. Not to save a concept. To save ourselves.
Our framework calls on people to share information, organize, mobilize, litigate and demand a stronger democracy. Electing leaders is one essential part of that work. But voting is not magic. It is medicine, and we must administer it and keep showing up to check on progress.
That is why our commitment must survive Tuesday’s results.
Black communities should not be expected to rescue American democracy while bearing the greatest burden of its failures.
After Election Day, we must sustain the organizations that defend voters between campaigns. We must keep showing up when districts are drawn, and election rules are debated. We must demand that legislators at the state and federal levels enshrine strong, enforceable protections against racial discrimination in voting, ones that look at actual effect rather than explicit intent.
We all have a stake in this, and thus the responsibilities belong to all of us. Black communities should not be expected to rescue American democracy while bearing the greatest burden of its failures. The donors, institutions and neighbors who celebrate Black turnout must also invest in the work that makes equal participation possible.
If you haven’t already done so, cast your ballot. Help someone else exercise their right. And Wednesday, find the new leaders who now work for you and demand that they do their jobs..
Whatever the results, the fight against authoritarianism will continue. Our task is to ensure that the power we exercise on Election Day becomes power the people can exercise every day after it.
The post Gutting the Voting Rights Act was wrong. Black voter turnout, however high, won’t change that. appeared first on MS NOW.
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