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Human Rights Watch: US: Officials' Pandemic Response Impaired Right to Vote
I SUSPECT THAT TO REPUBLICANS, WHOSE ANIMOSITY TOWARDS VOTING RIGHTS IS NOTORIOUS, THIS IS A FEATURE, NOT A BUGhttps://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/22/us-officials-pandemic-response-impaired-right-vote
(Washington, DC, September 22, 2020) – Responses by election officials in the United States to the Covid-19 pandemic seriously impaired some people’s ability to vote in primary elections, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Election officials need to ensure that every method of voting allowed in their state is easy to access and use for all voters, so that there can be a credible US general election on November 3, 2020.
The 83-page report, “What Democracy Looks Like: Protecting Voting Rights in the US during the Covid-19 Pandemic,” examines changes that election officials made in response to the Covid-19 pandemic prior to the 2020 primaries in Arizona, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Wisconsin and their impact on the right to vote. Human Rights Watch recommended steps US election officials should take for the November election and beyond to prevent violations of voting rights, which during the primaries had discriminatory impacts on Black and Latinx people.
“During the 2020 US primaries, many voters faced closed polling places or long lines, or had to choose between their right to vote and their health,” said Alison Parker, US program managing director at Human Rights Watch and the report’s author. “State and local officials will need to make sure these restrictions on voter rights are not repeated in November and that voting options and their availability – including the numbers of polling stations – are greater, not fewer.”
In Wisconsin’s spring primaries, many citizens, particularly Black and Latinx people, could not vote in Milwaukee because they could not spare hours or were physically unable to stand in line, lacked transport, or feared exposure to the Covid-19 virus at the few and crowded polling places that remained open as officials adjusted to a shortage of poll workers. Closing polling places contradicts scientific recommendations on reducing crowds and lines during the pandemic.
Given the preference, according to studies, of many Black people for visual confirmation that their vote was cast by voting in person, poll closures and consolidation in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania and in Richland County, South Carolina, may have had a disproportionate effect on their right to vote because they could not find polling locations, lacked transport, or were unable to wait in line.
The 83-page report, “What Democracy Looks Like: Protecting Voting Rights in the US during the Covid-19 Pandemic,” examines changes that election officials made in response to the Covid-19 pandemic prior to the 2020 primaries in Arizona, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Wisconsin and their impact on the right to vote. Human Rights Watch recommended steps US election officials should take for the November election and beyond to prevent violations of voting rights, which during the primaries had discriminatory impacts on Black and Latinx people.
“During the 2020 US primaries, many voters faced closed polling places or long lines, or had to choose between their right to vote and their health,” said Alison Parker, US program managing director at Human Rights Watch and the report’s author. “State and local officials will need to make sure these restrictions on voter rights are not repeated in November and that voting options and their availability – including the numbers of polling stations – are greater, not fewer.”
In Wisconsin’s spring primaries, many citizens, particularly Black and Latinx people, could not vote in Milwaukee because they could not spare hours or were physically unable to stand in line, lacked transport, or feared exposure to the Covid-19 virus at the few and crowded polling places that remained open as officials adjusted to a shortage of poll workers. Closing polling places contradicts scientific recommendations on reducing crowds and lines during the pandemic.
Given the preference, according to studies, of many Black people for visual confirmation that their vote was cast by voting in person, poll closures and consolidation in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania and in Richland County, South Carolina, may have had a disproportionate effect on their right to vote because they could not find polling locations, lacked transport, or were unable to wait in line.