S21 E17: Data Points Deep Dive: The History and Importance of Voting

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That's audible.com slash SWW for a free 30-day trial. Hi friends, it's Tiffany Reese, and today we're bringing you a special Data Points deep dive episode on the history and importance of voting in the United States.
I want to give a special shout out to Broken Cycle team members, Amy B. Chesler, Lily Rowe, and Becca High for working on this episode alongside me.
With the elections getting closer, it's natural to discuss the importance of voting and the history of it in our country. But the reality for victims and survivors of crime is that the laws we create and the legislators we elect

through the voting process are always relevant. Laws dictate what is criminally wrong and

punishable, and as citizens, we have the ability to propose that legislation and watch those laws

be voted into action. Citizens also elect many of the government officials who vote on those laws.
It is these pieces of legislation and elected legislators that control a survivor's sense of safety, protection, and ultimately their future. Exercising our right to vote is intrinsically intertwined with our potential to support crime victims and hold perpetrators accountable.
For example, some lawmakers have created legislation that abolishes parole, which deeply affects a victim's journey and the way they may or may not have to continue to advocate for themselves. Another example is displayed in the devastating cuts to VOCA, or Victims of Crime Act.
VOCA covers the out-of-pocket costs that victims often face related to crimes, like medical and dental care, counseling, crime scene cleanup, or funerals and burials. In 2024, VOCA stood to potentially lose over $700 million of funding because of cutbacks made by elected leaders in Congress.
In other words, a survivor's path is ultimately dictated by those involved in the criminal justice and legislative systems, and those systems are dictated by our laws. There are three types of elections that citizens take part in, primary, general, and local elections.
There can also be special elections in which the voting process is used to fill a vacancy. In a presidential primary election, voters from specific political parties are casting ballots for whom they think will be the ideal candidate on the ballot in the next presidential election for their registered party.
The statewide presidential primary is held in March of even-numbered years, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday. Statewide primary elections offer voters a chance to select candidates at the state level.
General elections are held in a whole state and are elections that are not limited to voters in a particular party or specific locality. The purpose of a presidential general election is to make a final choice among the various candidates.
The purpose of the statewide general election for state and congressional offices is for voters to make a final choice between the two candidates who received the most votes. These choices for federal public officials are made by voting on the November ballot.
Election Day, as it's come to be known, is statutorily set by the U.S. government as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
Statewide measures can also be placed on the November ballot. Despite the term Election Day being generally applied to the presidential general election that occurs every four years, there are several other opportunities that allow you to cast a ballot.
Congressional elections occur every two years for the members of the U.S. House of Representatives and every six years for each class of senators.
There are also yearly elections that occur locally and at the state level. It is immensely important for those of us with the power to vote to use our voice to make our choices known, especially in local and state elections.
Officials elected to those positions will have the power to directly

affect the way you live your life in your community. Voter turnout, which is the term applied to the percentage of voters that submitted ballots compared to the number of eligible voters, can be incredibly varied.
For example, according to Pew Research, The elections of 2018, 2020, and 2022 were three of the highest turnout U.S. elections of their respective types in decades.
About two-thirds, or 66%, of the voting-eligible population turned out for the 2020 presidential election, the highest rate for any national election since 1900.

The 2018 election, with 49% turnout, had the highest rate for a midterm since 1914. Even the 2022 elections turnout, with a slightly lower rate of 46%, exceeded that of all midterm elections since 1970, end quote.
Voter turnout tends to be intermittent dependent upon social and political events. As Pew Research points out, the turnout of intermittent voters often defined the outcome of an election.
And although voting has always been important, especially to crime victims, we haven't always been allowed the power and ability to exercise our vote. In fact, the American government has historically restricted and or abolished the power to vote for large groups of marginalized people.
Voting suppression, which dates back to the beginning of American history, makes it even more necessary to educate ourselves and take advantage of our voting power. Voting suppression is any action that's done with the purpose of reducing voting or registering to vote for members of a targeted racial community, political party, age range, religious group, or other marginalized community.
According to Britannica, the most frequent victims of voter suppression in America have been members of the African-American community. But in order to truly understand the depths with which many communities have had to fight to establish their voting rights, we have to go back to the beginning.
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When America was founded in 1776, the country was in a very unique position. Up until then, most organized governments were led by a monarch, or someone who generally gained their position through birth.
In their attempt to gain political freedom, America's founding fathers developed a voting process rooted in democracy, which is a type of government largely run by elected officials. However, the U.S.
Constitution, which was first upheld in 1789, didn't define specific voting rights. Instead, it proposed that each state be given the power to regulate their own.
As part of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers also established the Electoral College, which was originally proposed to offer a compromise in the election of the president by a vote between Congress and the popular vote of qualified citizens. Within the Electoral College, each state receives a certain number of electors based on the size of the state's population.
The state's electors would then cast two votes for president. The candidate who gained the most electoral votes became president, and the runner-up became vice president.
Traditionally, the Electoral College members cast their vote for the candidate who received the popular vote in their state. However, there is no law that states that electors must offer their vote to the popularity-voted candidate in their state.
As a result, those that oppose the Electoral College often draw attention to the fact that the system seemingly distracts from our individual voting power.

Lesser known is that the Electoral College has racist origins. At the time of the establishment of the Electoral College, the populations in the North and South were approximately equal.
However, about one-third of those living in the South were forced to be enslaved. The Southern region would have less power in a popular vote system because such a large portion of the population was unable to vote.
The ultimate solution was an indirect method of choosing the president or the development of the Electoral College. With about 93% of the country's enslaved persons in just five southern states, that region was the undoubted beneficiary of the Compromise, and the Electoral College's roots in bigotry drew opposition when it was created, and it surely continues to draw opposition to this day.
Not long after the Electoral College's inception, the first presidential election occurred in 1789. In that election, voting rights were granted to white male landowners over the age of 21, except in New Jersey, where women who were property owners were also allowed to vote.
New Jersey representatives specifically added language in their voting clause to include female landowners as eligible voters, which was revolutionary at the time. In most states, Catholics, Jews, and Quakers were barred from voting, whether they were white male landowners or not.
Then in 1790, the naturalization law was passed in order to define what U.S. citizenship could include, and in turn, which white male landowners were allowed to vote.
The law stated that, quote, only white immigrants who had lived in the United States for at least two years and were of good character were eligible for citizenship, end quote. Over the next couple hundred years, Americans would continue to debate over the voting standards, or if the laws should be loosened.
In 1792, New Hampshire was officially the first state to remove the land ownership requirement for voting. At that time, New Jersey was still the only state in the country that allowed women to vote.
Shortly thereafter, the Twelfth Amendment was proposed as a result of the 1800 election tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Then in 1804, the year Aaron Burr would kill Alexander Hamilton in a duel, the Twelfth Amendment was ratified.
The Twelfth Amendment changed the voting landscape forever. Instead of casting two ballots for president, electoral college members now distinctly cast one vote for president and one vote for a vice president, which remains to be the case today.
Then, in November 1807, the New Jersey state legislature stripped the vote from women, people of color, and recent immigrants because of, quote, regional controversies within the state over slavery, voter intimidation at the polls, fear of foreign influence, and a backlash against women's political gains, end quote. And despite the ongoing late 1700s and early 1800s argument over whether women and people of marginalized communities should be allowed to vote, legislators would now come to agree that land ownership should not be a requirement for voting, making white men over the age of 21 the only eligible voters in America.
Over the span of 64 years, the rest of the states would model New Hampshire's 1792 decision and abolish the land ownership voting requirement, with the last state being North Carolina in 1856. The early to mid-1800s in America began a time of growth and hope for many white citizens.
However, the reality for minority communities was much more restrictive. Although slavery had begun in America even prior to colonial times, the mid-1800s marked a period of heightened devastation and impact on African American communities.
By that time, many major American industries relied deeply on slavery, at the cost of millions of lives. As a result, there was a great deal of civil unrest between the highly polarized North and South, with slavery being at the forefront of their humanitarian-based arguments.
In 1857, a Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott case added to the polarization in the country. The ruling stated that Congress could not prohibit slavery because the Constitution protected the property rights of slaveholders.
Then, in 1861, American citizens elected Republican Abraham Lincoln as president, which led to even more unrest. His political campaign success was a sign to the Confederate South that they had lost some of their power.
Ultimately, the Civil War began on April 12, 1861, mere months after Lincoln was elected. Despite the country's unrest, President Abraham Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, freeing enslaved people held in Confederate states.
As the National American Museum of African American History and Culture states, the 13th Amendment made the Emancipation Federal Policy was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on February 1, 1865 and was ratified on December 6, 1865. However, just two and a half months after signing the 13th Amendment, President Lincoln would be assassinated by a white supremacist who opposed his anti-slavery views while attending the theater with his wife.
Lincoln's presidential successor was Andrew Johnson, a man whose beliefs were notoriously far more conservative than Lincoln's. Although under his presidency, Johnson did retain the 13th Amendment, he did allow increasingly more and more, quote, black codes to regulate those who were now freed, similar to pre-Civil War regulations.
Northerners were outraged at the revived racism and began to call for radical reconstruction. As a result of the political and social unrest in America at this time, a group of vicious bigots created an underground cult that they would infamously dub the Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1965.
This white supremacist group, which would come to be known as the KKK, worked tirelessly to target, torment, terrorize, and even slaughter civil and voting rights workers all over the country. However, human rights activists continued to fight to be heard.
Eventually, the 14th Amendment, which offered citizenship to everyone born or naturalized in America, including former enslaved persons, was passed by Congress on June 13, 1866 and ratified on July 9, 1868. Then, under Ulysses as Grant's presidency, Congress passed the 15th Amendment.
The 15th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote of all men, regardless of race, color, and prior servitude status. In March of 1870, Thomas Mundy Peterson became the first African American to vote in a local election.
Juneteenth has become the most well-known celebration for the ending of slavery in the United States and viewed by some as America's second Independence Day. Dating back to 1865, Juneteenth commemorates the day when 250,000 enslaved people were freed in the state of Texas and during the final final days of the Civil War, were declared free by the U.S.
Army. As soon as the following year, local festivities were organized in African American communities to celebrate and remember the significance of that day, June 19th.
However, the enactments of these policies did not mean that election officials welcomed non-white voters warmly at polling places. Instead, because of pervasive racism, states began to enact policies in order to further restrict marginalized community members' right to vote, such as biased voting taxes and literacy tests.
Discriminatory actions like voter suppression and voter intimidation continued to be on the rise. Growing unrest in the voting landscape and the feminist movement inspired Susan B.
Anthony to vote in the presidential election of 1872 two years later. Susan was arrested as a result.
Shortly after, Sojourner Truth, who was an abolitionist, former enslaved person, and women's and voters' rights activist, also tried to cast a ballot in the 1872 election. She was also turned away, as women were still not allowed to vote.
As communities continued to fight for their right to vote, the American government continued to tighten restrictions in response. The limitations on voting continued to escalate, and in 1876, Native Americans were deemed non-citizens and saw what little voting rights they had taken away.
In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed and prevented those with Chinese heritage from becoming citizens, which kept them from voting too. In 1887, the Dawes Act was passed, which granted citizenship to Native Americans if they abandoned their tribal affiliations.
Wyoming had originally granted women the right to vote in 1873 when it was still a territory. However, their right to vote was not applicable to federal elections, only state and local elections.
After voting advancement occurred in 1890, the Indian Naturalization Act was passed, granting citizenship to Native Americans whose citizenship applications were approved. As these changes were made and began to be upheld throughout the country, women continued to voice their desire to vote.
States across the country began to allow women to vote at the state level until 1920. Throughout that time, the suffragette movement expanded throughout America.
The suffragettes were a group of women who campaigned for women's right to vote. Their creative actions and slogans snagged the attention of many citizens, as they used mottos like, Deeds not words, and justice not favors.
They successfully protested all over the country, with their first march taking place in 1908 in New York. The suffragette movement had many opposers and faced much backlash.
In fact, over 1,000 women were arrested from the start of the 20th century to the beginning of World War I while trying to vote or while protesting for their right to vote. Women imprisoned for these offenses were often assaulted and brutalized during their imprisonment.
Notoriously, on November 10, 1917, 33 suffragists were arrested and jailed for protesting outside of the White House. Hours later, they would be subjected to violent abuse and assaults at a North Virginia prison.
The suffragists would end up entitling their treatment on November 14, 1917 as the Night of Terror. Word spread of their experiences, which, according to the Washington Post, helped galvanize public support of the suffrage movement.
Finally, in 1920, only about 100 years ago from today and about 140 years after America was founded, women were granted the right to vote with the 19th Amendment. However, these rights remained primarily reserved for white women.
American history repeated itself, and as one faction of citizens gained access to voting and the powers related to it,

another group was further marginalized. World War I had taken place and left a large impact on the world.
As a result of this war, there was heightened racism towards Japanese Americans. The Supreme Court ruled that people of Japanese heritage were ineligible to become naturalized citizens in 1922.
And in 1923, all Americans of Southeast Asian and Indian descent were banned from becoming naturalized citizens. Then in 1924, the Citizenship Act granted citizenship to Native Americans.
In reaction to the act, many states began passing laws and policies prohibiting Native Americans from voting. The restrictions continued to become even more pervasive in 1925 when citizens of the Philippines were barred from U.S.
citizenship unless they served three years in the U.S. Navy.
The next years in American history were greatly impacted by the Great Depression and World War II. Black citizens faced the highest rate of unemployment in the 1930s.
Heightened tension remained amidst an insecure, unstable time. Then, when war became an unavoidable reality, minority communities were forced to be frontline warriors for the U.S.
While many male citizens were deployed to fight in World War II, women were finally allowed into the American workforce at much greater rates. With these newfound opportunities and responsibilities, many marginalized communities demanded more freedom.
Still, many years would pass and many communities would continue to be massively underrepresented in the election process. Then, in 1952, the McCarran-Walter Act granted all people of Asian ancestry the right to become citizens, effectively granting them the right to vote.
Nearly a decade later, in 1961, the 23rd Amendment also passed, which granted residents of Washington, D.C. the right to vote for U.S.
president. Despite being our country's capital, Washington, D.C.
residents were not allowed to vote in presidential elections before then. The 1960s continued to be a turning point in American politics and for our voting rights.
The civil rights movement was challenging America's institutional racist beliefs and policies. Then the murders of civil and voting rights activists James Cheney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman in Mississippi on June 20, 1964, demanded the attention of the federal government.
A gang of over 20 KKK members killed the boys with the aid of a local deputy sheriff because of the young men's local efforts to enable equal access to voting and education. In 1967, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations, seven of the 18 defendants would be found guilty, including Deputy Sheriff Price, but none on murder charges.
One major conspirator, Edgar Ray Killen, went free after a lone juror couldn't bring himself to convict a Baptist preacher. Not long after the boy's murder, a 600-person civil rights protest was terrorized by a group of white state troopers in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965.
This day became known as Bloody Sunday. Dr.
King, how are things shaping up now for tomorrow? Things are shaping up beautifully. We have people coming in from all over the country.
I suspect that we will have representatives from almost every state in the union and naturally a large number of people from the state of Alabama And we hope to see and we plan to see the greatest witness for freedom ever taken place That has ever taken place on the steps of the capital of any state in the south In 1965 a group of young people students and others attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, to march 50 miles from Selma to Montgomery to dramatize to the nation and to the world. The people wanted simply to register to vote.
They came toward us, beating us with nightsticks and bullwhips, tramping us with horses and releasing the tear gas. At the foot of that bridge, I was beaten.
I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw death.
I felt like it was the last demonstration. It was the last protest act on my part.

Like I was going to take my last breath from the tear gas.

I saw people rolling, heard people screaming and hollering.

We couldn't go forward. If we tried to go forward, we would have gone into the heat of battle.

We couldn't go to the side, to the left or to the right. We would have been going over into the Alabama River.
So we were beaten back down the streets of Selma, back downtown to the Brown Chapel AME Church. I don't know to this day how I made it back to the church.
I do remember being in the church and making a statement to the crowd that assembled there. And I said something to the effect that I don't understand how President Johnson can send troops to Vietnam, can send troops to the Congo or to San Domingo, and cannot send troops to Selma, Alabama to protect black people who want the right to register to vote to participate in the democratic process.
The Monday after Bloody Sunday, after we were beaten in Selma, Dr. King came to my hospital bedside and said, John, don't worry.
It's a call for religious leaders to come. The events of Selma had been brought to a climax by a nighttime attack on a white Boston minister by white men.
He died two days later. President Lyndon Johnson spoke to the nation.
So I ask you to join me in working long hours, nights, and weekends if necessary, to pass this bell. And I don't make that request lightly.
Far from the window where I sit with the problems of our country, I recognize that from outside this chamber is the outraged conscience of nation, the grave concern of many nations, and the harsh judgment of history on our acts. But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over.
What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America.

It is the effort of American Negroes

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Their cause must be our cause too.

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but really it's all of us

who must overcome the crippling legacy

of bigotry and injustice.

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The public reaction to the increasing violence in Alabama, Mississippi, and across the country, as well as Johnson's initiative, spurred Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The act forbade states from imposing discriminatory restrictions on who can vote.
This was the first time in history that many marginalized communities had been granted the right to vote. And as a result of the act's passing, by the end of 1965, a quarter of a million new Black voters had been registered.
By the end of 1966, only 4 out of 13 Southern states had fewer than 50% of African Americans registered to vote. Although hurdles remained for citizens of minority communities as a result of systemic racism and continued voter suppression, voting rights shifted drastically and paved the way for meaningful changes to be made.
Just six years later, in 1972, the voting age was lowered to the age of 18, allowing even more accessibility. And in 1975, voting became even more inclusive.
It was the first year voting materials were translated into other languages besides English. In other words, it took some communities in America nearly 200 years to be heard in the political landscape via the voting process.
And although it's a right every citizen in this country should possess, it's still an impactful power that continues to be threatened. Voter suppression is something that has been occurring since the beginning of American history, and it continues to this day.
In fact, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, 2021 was a banner year for new barriers to the right to vote. 19 states enacted 34 laws restricting access to voting, far and away the most in any year in at least the past decade.
The aforementioned laws attempted to control access to voting via such methods as creating obstacles for voting by mail, establishing new voter ID requirements, and setting limitations on what election officials can do to help promote voter access. Some of the laws were racist in nature,

taking targeted action to restrict methods of voting

that had been especially utilized by African-American communities.

Voter suppression can also be more covert in nature.

A lack of accessible polling places or limited polling times

are also methods of suppression.

Similarly, the federal government has also criminalized voter intimidation. According to the ACLU, voter intimidation is when someone is intimidated, threatened, or coerced by another person for the purpose of interfering with the right of that person to vote or vote as they may choose.
Many states also have their own laws prohibiting voter intimidation. Voter intimidation may include questioning voters about their citizenship or criminal record with the intention to interfere with their ability to vote, falsely presenting yourself as a polling place or election official, or other harassment, particularly towards non-English speakers and voters of color.
Voter suppression and intimidation can occur anytime, anywhere, but is generally targeted towards minority communities and happens in a polling or voter registration setting. And as voting happens frequently throughout different times of the year, it's important to educate ourselves on when and where it can happen most.
Voter fraud is another type of election crime that has recently been given a lot of attention. Voter fraud is the intentional duplication and or falsification of votes.
Voter fraud can include knowingly casting more than one ballot in the same election or voting using someone else's identity. And despite consistent allegations of voter fraud occurring in the last few elections, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, voter fraud and voter impersonation is extremely rare.
The center states that most instances of alleged fraud are mistakes by voters, administrators, or are a result of election misconduct. Quote, the Brennan Center's seminal report demonstrated that most allegations of fraud turn out to be baseless.
Numerous other studies, including one commissioned by the Trump administration, have reached the same conclusion. End quote.
If you or someone you know believe you may have been a witness or a victim of voter intimidation, suppression, or fraud, you can report it to the Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE. You can also report it to the U.S.
Department of Justice voting rights at 800-253-3931 or your local and state officials, including poll workers, elections commissioners, and elections supervisors. American citizens' right to exercise our vote is a privilege that nearly took 200 years to fight for.
Therefore, we should not take it for granted. It's also important for us to become allies for those who may be experiencing voter suppression or intimidation.
Ways that you can help include bringing awareness, encouraging voter registration and voter turnout, sharing election information, or volunteering your time to register voters or even working at a polling place. The United States Election Assistance Commission link is included in the episode notes

in the event that you'd like to volunteer to be a poll worker.

Other nonprofit organizations are making an effort

in the voting landscape.

Vote.org is a great resource

that offers ways to register to vote,

check your registration, vote by mail,

see what's on your ballot, get election reminders, and find volunteer opportunities. The National Association of Social Workers is also making efforts to increase voter participation.
They've created several successful collaborations with organizations such as Rock the Vote, Voto Latino, and Nonprofit Vote, whose purpose is also to help other nonprofit organizations engage the people they serve in voting in elections. The NASW has also partnered with the National Voting Rights Task Force, whose mission is to offer tangible steps to ensure voters in your community have access to vote.
For a more comprehensive list of organizations that are working to help increase voter accessibility and decrease voter suppression, please visit somethingwaswrong.com slash resources. Many of the amazing groups listed on the website are only able to exist because of the community's help and support from people like you.
If you would like to find out more information

about volunteer opportunities,

please feel free to visit the resources page and reach out directly in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

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