Voter Suppresion

Voter Suppression On October 23, I went to the lecture Mr. Wilson gave at the Methodist Center about voter suppression. He started by talking about the old ways of voter suppression. These were very indiscrete forms of voter suppression all targeting a specific population of people. For instance in the 1880’s in New York voting was only allowed on Saturdays, this was an attempt to try to stop the Jewish community from casting there vote. There were also poll taxes in many places; this was an attempt to try to keep the poor from voting. In the first half of the 1900’s the KKK would often threaten people with physical harm if they were to vote, this is another form of voter suppression.
In recent years voter suppression has been much more subtle. Today voter suppression is thought of as coming up with clever ways to not let someone vote that would otherwise be legal to vote. In 2000 there were long lines that would take several hours to wait through in certain precincts. This was a strategic move by politicians to try to suppress the vote of this area. They did it by reducing the places to vote in that area and providing them with very few workers. On the other hand in areas that they know will vote for them they will make sure there is plenty of places to vote and lots of workers so the voter can get in and out. One of the most commonly debated form of recent voter suppression is voter ID laws, these are laws designed to suppress the votes of those that do not have a state issued ID. Some studies show that up to 11% of the voting population does not have an ID.