Early voting has begun across the country, and in key states like Georgia and Texas, voters were forced to stand in line up to 11 hours to cast their ballots. Images of shockingly long voting lines in heavily Black precincts rocketed around the internet.
This is what voter suppression looks like, and it’s only the beginning. In fact, even more insidious efforts to suppress the vote are underway, and many of those are far less visible and obvious.
No legitimate democracy can possibly function this way, and it must be stopped. The Intercept’s team of investigative reporters are digging deep to uncover voter suppression tactics, who’s responsible, and how to stop them.
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With the Voting Rights Act largely gutted by the Supreme Court, Attorney General William Barr in charge of enforcing federal civil rights protections, and Trump ginning up phony claims about voter fraud, Republican officeholders have a green light to do everything in their power to make voting harder for African Americans, young people, and other groups they don’t want to vote.
For instance, as The Intercept reported, 100,000 ballot requests in Iowa were thrown out after Republicans filed a lawsuit over a technicality. This one voter suppression tactic alone could determine control of the U.S. Senate by tipping the outcome of Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst’s tight reelection.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has limited the entire state to one absentee ballot delivery location per county. The largest county in Texas, Brewster County, is larger than the entire state of Connecticut, forcing some voters to drive 4-5 hours round trip to cast a ballot. Half of U.S. states have a smaller population than that of Harris County, where Houston is located.
Cable TV and other corporate media outlets only give these issues serious airplay when it’s too late — when long lines at the polls are preventing people from voting. Then, instead of covering the policy decisions that result in those long lines, they ignore the issue again until the next election.
But The Intercept’s team of investigative journalists are on the case week in and week out, uncovering voter suppression schemes that aren’t visible to the naked eye when there’s still time for the public and voting rights advocates to prevent the damage.
