Virginia State Board of Elections : A Note about Voting, Voting Rights and modern Election Laws

Agencies of government can only do what they are empowered or directed by the laws, or courts, to do. (This differs from the criminal laws, which tell people what they cannot do, and what the penalties will be.)  The laws, and sometimes the courts, also provide some directions about how things are to be done. 

Election laws on “how” are especially complicated. But it’s alright that election laws are so complicated because there should be no wiggle room.  There should be no basis for a losing candidate to claim that the system was rigged against him or her, or that the election was not conducted and certified in a fair and non-partisan manner.  

Every government that taxes us, regulates our activity, protects us, or comes to our assistance in our hour of need is established upon building blocks of individual voters’ votes.  The bedrock of representative government is the election. 

Anytime we wonder about the importance of voting, voting rights or the laws that protect those rights, we need only look back 40 or so years at the civil rights movement, and what black Americans went through then to gain the ability to vote. 

Most especially, we need to be cognizant of the administrative hurdles that many states put in their way during most of the twentieth century:

• the so-called "literacy test"

• the poll tax (which in Virginia had to be paid in the spring in order to vote in the fall, and for three years in a row)

• long waiting periods to establish residency

• "blank" applications (no questions – just write down everything that’s required, in the right order, from memory)

• applications on different color paper or printed with different color ink depending on the race of the applicant

• requirements that all voters register in person

• regular and irregular purges of non-voters

• registration times that were irregular, rare or unadvertised

• precinct registrars who worked out of their houses (hard to find and potentially intimidating)

• disproportionate and multi-member districts drawn to minimize the electoral impact of particular areas or populations.

The list goes on but these are some of the more grievous obstacles to voting that were once commonplace.

Many of the detailed election laws that specify how things must be done are because we have all learned how things must not be done.  Not now.  Not ever again.