The Untold Story of 2016 

Four months before the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, Republican-nominee Donald Trump voiced concern for the validity of the results during his interview with Sean Hannity. He stated: “We’d better be careful because that election is going to be rigged … I hope the Republicans are watching closely, or it’s going to be taken away from us.” And one month before the election, the soon-to-be President tweeted, “Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day.”

President Trump’s sensationalist claims are rather scandalous, but stirring up controversy is not the worst repercussion of his statements. His words are dangerous. By claiming that he could lose the election because of voter fraud, or a “rigged” American electoral system, Trump called into question the transparency and fairness of the election results–both undermining and delegitimizing the American democracy. 

The reality, according to The Brennan Center for Justice, is that voter fraud is extremely rare. The centre’s report The Truth About Voter Fraud reviewed elections that were thought to be fraudulent, and found incident rates between 0.0003 and 0.0025 per cent. The report went on to note that it is more likely that an American “will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.” As voter fraud is not nearly as common as President Trump has led many to believe, what did happen in 2016 was deliberate restrictions on the voting rights of minorities in states with a Republican majority. That is the untold story of 2016 that Stacey Abrams is shining light into, and succeeding marvelously.

What Happened in 2016

Voter suppression has long been present in U.S. elections. The Jim Crow laws are a seminal example of this reality, but even after their abolishment, a wide array of tactics have been implemented to perpetuate this practise. Ranging from the creation of the National Ballot Security Task Force by the Republican National Committee in the 1980s, a group of off-duty police that steered black voters away from polling stations in New Jersey, to disinformation and strict voter ID laws in certain states,  voter suppression has been a recurrent, and often overlooked, issue in American politics. The 2016 election was unprecedented in the sense that it was the first election to take place without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act since 1965. This legislation aimed to end the legal barriers that enabled state and local levels of government to limit voting access for minorities, particularly African Americans. The consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision to gut the VRA were felt immediately in poll stations across the country. According to The Leadership Conference Fund Democracy Diverted, 1,688 polling places were shut down between 2012 and 2018. Another study from The Brennan Centre for Justice revealed that 99 bills were introduced in 31 states to restrict voting access. 

Under the pretext of voter restrictions being essential to avert voter fraud, states controlled by Republicans implemented tougher voter ID laws that were enforced along with other measures such as cutbacks to early voting. A study conducted by Priorities USA explains how Wisconsin in 2016 was a perfect example of this practice. Trump won the state with 22,748 votes but a voter-ID law implemented shortly before the election is believed to have suppressed 200,000 votes–more than enough to have changed the outcome. Moreover, a study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that 23,000 people were unable to vote due to ID requirements in two of the state’s most democratic counties. Neil Albrecht, Milwaukee’s top election official, stated that it was likely that “enough people were prevented from voting to have changed the outcome of the presidential election in Wisconsin.”

It is clear that the voter suppression purposefully and meticulously implemented as soon as key points of the Voting Rights Act were repealed did not prevent Hillary Clinton from winning the last Presidential Election. Nonetheless, it is very likely that the election results would have not been the same in certain states had the Voting Rights Act not been gutted, as the above mentioned example of Winsconsin demonstrates. More importantly, by rendering federal oversight unnecessary, this decision allowed for laws with partisan intent to pass at the state level and, as Stacey Abrams argued in a debate, for the creation of “an atmosphere of fear, making people worry that their votes won’t count”.

Preparing for 2020

Ms. Abrams became a seminal figure in the fight to end attempts of disenfranchisement and voter suppression after she lost a tight Georgia gubernatorial election in 2018. Polling place confusion and other “complications” that prevented many from voting in the occasion of that election led her to start Fair Fight 2020 in August of that year. The purpose of this initiative is to stop legal voter suppression mechanisms from preventing fair and clean elections. The goal is to make each vote count and allow every eligible citizen to have a say in determining the future of American politics. Abrams made it her goal to register 900,000 unregistered people of colour in the state of Georgia.

Fair Fight has now made a remarkable contribution in having energized civil movements across the U.S; to contest and effectively bring an end to the egregious policies enacted in the past years. In Florida, a state with a long history of voter disenfranchisement, Democrats and civil rights advocates are currently fighting a law passed by the GOP-controlled legislature that required formerly incarcerated people to pay a tax or fee so as to regain their right to vote. And finally, in December of 2019, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill that restored the previously repealed sections of the Voting Rights Act, in an effort to reverse the appalling outcomes of the decision made by the Supreme Court in 2013. The White House, not surprisingly, opposed the bill.

Despite these recent positive developments that intend to stop laws reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, the 2020 upcoming election is still threatened. Voter intimidation and the maintenance of extreme partisan gerrymandered districts as a means to suppress black votes but also those of native Americans, young people or single women are some of the draconian methods that Republicans are still pushing forward.

Equal voting rights are far from being a reality in the 21st century United States. There is still a long way to go and the fight for voting rights will be critical in the next election not only to protect the future of the American democracy, but also to assure the President of the United States that the elections are not “rigged”.