New Yorkers may like to think that voting rights violations only happen in places like Texas, Florida, and Georgia, but the truth is that voting rights suppression happens in “blue” states and “red” states alike, including right here in the Hudson Valley.
New York has a long history of practices that deny access to the ballot and discriminate against voters based on race, ethnicity, and language. New Yorkers regularly face barriers to voter registration and ballot access, racially inappropriate redistricting and other vote dilution, voter purging, polling place relocations or closures, and limited access to language assistance. These practices disproportionately harm voters of color and create racial and ethnic inequities in one of our most fundamental rights.
The New York State Assembly’s John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act would go a long way to solving these pervasive problems, and a brief look at recent history makes it clear just how necessary this legislation is.
Over the past 25 years, New York has recorded at least 14 violations of the federal Voting Rights Act. But that number is just the tip of the iceberg. New York is home to thousands of local government entities, including counties, cities, towns, villages, school districts and special purpose districts. Many of these political divisions conduct their own elections without oversight from state or county election boards.
It would take years and millions of dollars to successfully sue any one of the thousands of organizations for voting rights violations, meaning there simply aren’t enough resources to go after all of them, even the many egregious ones.
Voters in the Hudson Valley also face these voter suppression tactics. In the controversial Clarkstown School District, 44 percent of public school students are children of color and 25 percent of the electorate are children of color. Yet the seven-member school board is all white. According to an analysis by the NYCLU, there are less than half the number of polling places for school board elections as there are for general elections, and the neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of people of color have no polling places for school board elections at all.
Off-cycle school board elections are not held on the same day as state or federal elections, and on average, nine in 10 eligible voters do not vote in Clarkstown School District elections, according to information released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the NYCLU.
The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a civil rights landmark that expanded and protected access to the ballot across the country. But it is under attack from the Supreme Court, and states across the country are rapidly passing laws to repeal it. Faced with this national threat, and given the disenfranchisement occurring in New York State, our state needs its own voting rights law.
The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act provides the nation’s leading protections against voter dilution and suppression. The bill increases language assistance, strengthens laws against voter intimidation, and increases transparency of critical voting data.
The law also makes it easier to bring legal action against voter suppression and racial vote dilution, making those lawsuits more likely to succeed, and requires local elections boards to get pre-approval from the state attorney general before making any changes that could restrict voter access.
This bill will solidify New York as one of the most democratic states in the nation and inspire other states to take action to make voting fair and equal. Voting is the foundation of our democracy. It is a right we exercise to protect everyone else. State lawmakers must ensure that the right to vote is protected and strengthened for all New Yorkers.
This article originally appeared in the Times Herald Record.