“Why Voting in This U.S. Election Will Not Be Equal” – The New York Times, 2020, 15:15 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYgX1ONUkq4

How do voting laws make it harder to vote? This video is a case study on how the gutting of the Voting Rights Act (in 2013) has affected elections in the state of Georgia. Like some other states, Georgia has experienced demographic shifts where the population has become more diverse and for a variety of reasons, less likely to vote Republican. This has caused Republicans in the state to shift their strategy from attempting to sway people to vote for Republican candidates, to attempting to limit who can vote in the first place. The end result is a less democratic system where the white power structure is more easily maintained.

Georgia is the only state which practices every one of the five most common voter suppression tactics. These include voter ID laws, polling place closures, proof of citizenship requirements, voter roll purges, and cuts in early voting. Since there is little to no evidence of voter fraud, we need to ask why these policies are being implemented. The answer is apparent and can be seen in how all of these policies disproportionately affect minorities. Since other states are following Georgia’s lead (including some in the north), this case study can provide us with a glimpse of how unequal future elections will be.

From the video’s description: The first episode of our four-part series, Stressed Election, focuses on voter suppression in Georgia, where a growing Black and Latino population is on the precipice of exercising its political voice, if they get the chance to vote.