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election coverage 2020
Voter Suppression Tactics and Long Lines Fail to Stop Black Voters
By Stacy M. Brown WI Senior Writer @StacyBrownMedia
The lines are long, but Americans – particularly African Americans – have demonstrated a will to vote.
On Oct. 22, the U.S. hit 100 percent of the total of 2016 early voting, and more than 47.1 million people have voted with just under a week before the general election.
Experts predict as many as 165 million votes in the 2020 election, including a massive African American turnout.
“If we get 154 million votes, then President Donald Trump will be looking at the most resounding defeat of an incumbent president in at least 40 years,” wrote Jonathan V. Last, the editor of the political website, “The Bulwark.” ident Shamika Bacchus said voting has become a family tradition, noting her maternal grandfather served as a president of the Memphis NAACP and her mother was heavily involved in helping people to register to vote. Bacchus complimented the elections board staff for “the cleanliness of the facility and efficiency in which people could come in, vote and leave within 15 minutes.”
While few voters revealed whom they casted their ballots for, Walker said he voted for Janeese Lewis George for Ward 4 D.C. Councilmember “because she beat [D.C. Councilmember] Brandon Todd” and Bacchus said she marked her ballot in the D.C. councilmember at-large races for incumbent Robert White (D) and candidate Jeanne Lewis. However,
“The only open question is the magnitude of Trump’s coming loss. But one thing is not in doubt: When America wakes up on Nov. 4, Joe Biden will have earned more votes than any man who’s ever run for president.”
Axios found that younger people are turning out in larger numbers this year, with the youth vote potentially the highest since 2008 for the election of Barack Obama.
Still, the wave of voters in places like Texas, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana show African Americans’ resiliency and resolve.
They have gone to great lengths to overcome voter suppression, discouragement, misinformation, gerrymandering, and so many other obstacles to
EARLY VOTING from Page 9
participate in America’s elections. Gloria Starks, a Congress Heights resident who voted at the ESA, made it clear why she voted early.
“I feel strongly about voting and I want to get Trump out of there,” she said. WI
5 People line up to vote on Election Day in Fairburn, Georgia, near Atlanta. (Brian Cahn/ZUMA)
In Fort Bend County, Texas, a checkin machine glitch shut down at least four precincts, and a court ruling that significantly limited ballot locations didn’t stop many African Americans from traveling long distances and overcoming even longer wait times to vote.
In Georgia, NPR reported that the clogged polling locations in metro Atlanta reflected an underlying pattern: the number of places to vote has shrunk statewide, with little recourse.
“Although the reduction in polling places has taken place across racial lines, it has primarily caused long lines in nonwhite neighborhoods where voter registration has surged, and more residents cast ballots in person on Election Day. The pruning of polling places started long before the pandemic, which has discouraged people from voting in person,” the report noted.
In Virginia, a glitch shut down polls and forced officials to push back deadlines to cast early votes.
Also, General Registrar Donna Patterson told reporters that the long lines in Virginia Beach had been like that each day since early voting began about one month ago.
Add to 55,000 mail-in ballots the registrar received to that point, Patterson noted that the state might have the highest voter turnout ever.
About 163,000 votes were cast in person across the state on the most recent Saturday in North Carolina.
The 828,456 people who’ve participated in early voting in North Carolina is more than double the number who went to the polls at this time during the 2016 election.
Meanwhile, “Texas has been under siege confronting voter suppression from multiple fronts from our Governor Greg Abbott to the state higher courts,” noted Sonny Messiah Jiles, the publisher and CEO of The Houston Defender Media Group.
“It is unbelievable or ridiculous for a county with 2.4 million registered voters to have one location to drop off mail-in ballots,” Jiles remarked.
“Despite their efforts, the Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins, a smart young millennial, has been strategic and innovative with drive-thru voting, doubling the early voting locations and the historical move of 24-hour voting. But aside from voting access, we need to beware not to be bamboozled listening to the polls and go and vote as our life depends on it because it does.”
Numerous voter suppression tactics have been used in Texas and throughout the nation, added Patrick Washington, CEO, and co-publisher of The Dallas Weekly.
“Like the late-night ruling, from a 5th Circuit Court via a three-judge panel, all of whom appointed by President Trump to uphold Governor Abbot’s mandate to limit one ballot drop box for millions of voters in Dallas county,” Washington observed.
However, he continued:
“Despite this deliberate, detrimental move, the night before early voting in Texas, I am pleased to see that the very voters that may have been affected in Dallas counties came to the polls big.
“I witnessed many volunteers at the Martin Luther King Center, assisting the elderly with remaining comfortable with chairs and water during the long wait and assisting first-time voters by explaining the sample ballots. To know that ballot records are being broken in counties all over Texas doesn’t shock me. Unfortunately, many tragic events due to racism and police brutality have occurred during Trump’s time in office.
“People are tired. People can’t see family and friends like they used to. In some cases, people are unemployed, angry, scared or maybe all of the above. So, in any case, people have the time to exercise their civic duty and vote.”
Even in states like Indiana, voter suppression efforts haven’t stopped Black people from lining up at the polls.
“Indiana has some incredibly restrictive voter laws, and currently we only have one early voting site in all of Indianapolis,” stated Robert Shegog, CEO at the Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper and Indiana Minority Business Magazine
“A few more will open Oct. 24, but significantly more are needed given the size of the city. However, it is very refreshing to see so many people voting early. This has been a trend in Indianapolis for over ten years now, and the numbers keep increasing,” Shegog noted.
The Indianapolis Recorder reported that there were 13,206 votes cast through the first nine days of early voting – or nearly 10,000 more in the same period in 2008 and 5,000 more than in 2016.
Early voting in Marion county started on Oct. 6 and continues through Nov. 2. In 2016, 33 percent of the 362,372 voters in Marion County voted early – a record-breaking number.
This year, Indiana voters expect to break the record again.
“When one considers the pandemic and the physical and mental effects it had on so many Hoosiers, the tough voting laws, only one early voting site in a city that is nearly 400 square miles,” Shegog said.
“Even the immense pressure that Blacks experience daily; the fact that so many people are voting early demonstrates their desire to have their voices heard and their votes counted.
“I am incredibly proud of the numbers, and local experts are optimistic that they will continue to increase through Nov. 3.” WI
By Stacy M. Brown WI Senior Writer @StacyBrownMedia
In 1831, the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society barred women from joining the organization. In response, a group led by Black suffragists, including Charlotte Forten, Sarah Purvis and Grace Bustill Douglass, formed the Female Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia.
Douglass, a well-known Quaker and an elite Black woman, later spearheaded efforts to gain all women’s fundamental rights.
She counted among those who would sign the Declaration of Sentiments which called for women to have a right to receive an education, own property, divorce their husbands, maintain custody of children and pursue careers.
Born in 1782 in Burlington, New Jersey, Douglass, and her family distinguished themselves as activists. Her father, Cyrus Bustill, the son of a slave, worked as a baker including serving for George Washington during the American Revolution while her mother, Elizabeth, a Native American, traced her roots to Delaware.
Already active in free Black communities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Grace married the Rev. Robert Douglass and settled in Philadelphia.
According to BlackPast.org, she and her only daughter, Sarah Mapps Douglass, embraced the Society of Friends and regularly attended Arch Street meetings in Philadelphia where Blacks and whites sat in separate sections – a policy which failed to deter the activism of the Douglass women.
Sarah Mapps Douglass followed closely in her mother’s footsteps, helping to establish the Female Literary Society which among its goals encouraged self-improvement.
Mapps Douglass heavily advocated women’s rights and, in 1831, she raised money in support of “The Liberator” – a newspaper founded by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.
Although white Quakers had long ago denounced slavery and had been active abolitionists, many held to segregationist customs.
Grace Bustill Douglass eventually became a member of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women and supported women’s suffrage movement. She also counted as a prosperous entrepreneur, running a successful millinery where she hired apprentices and provided young women opportunities to learn skills and care for themselves. And like her father, she founded a school which her daughter attended.
“We owe everything to our forefathers and mothers. I greatly appreciate their courage, bravery and persistent pursuit for equal rights for all,” said Deborah Pretty, the president of the informational web-based business, PYTalkBiz.com.
“The adage is true if we don’t know our history, we will repeat it. And that knowledge and knowing is power. To know that people that walk, talk and look like us inspires us to keep moving.”
Dana Rubin, of Speaking While Female, a website that features more than 1,600 examples of forgotten, overlooked and hard-to-find speeches and testimony by women, said she’s always been impressed with women like Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells and others because of how hard they fought for women’s rights.
“In particular, I’ve become fascinated by the overlooked history of African-American women in the suffrage moment,” Rubin noted. “Black wom-
5 Sarah Mapps Douglass (African American Registry) en did speak out proudly and persuasively for the vote, and their words, arguments, and voices deserve to be included in the history books.”
Douglass, whose devotion to education, activism and reform remains legendary, died March 9, 1842. This feature is part of an ongoing Washington Informer series about the Women’s Suffrage Movement initiated by Washington Informer Publisher Denise Rolark Barnes. It lives in the institutional home of The Washington Informer Charities. WI
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