Feel Like It’s Getting Harder to Vote? You’re Not Alone

 Illustration by Katty Huertas

Voting, the bedrock of our democracy, is the single most important practice for citizens to make their voices heard. Yet, since the 2020 election, Republican state legislatures across the country have passed voter suppression bills under the guise of “protecting integrity in our election.” This façade does a poor job of covering what these laws are truly intended for: making it more difficult to vote. 

The first time I voted in my hometown of Norfolk, Virginia, I was seventeen. I know what you are thinking, and to answer your question: No, I did not commit voter fraud. In the state of Virginia, if an individual turns eighteen before election day, they may legally vote in the primaries despite being under eighteen. Since that first vote was cast, I have voted in every election in which I was eligible to participate. Chalk it up to a love of politics, or parents who brought me along with them to the neighborhood precinct to vote; I just really love voting. Yes, the lines are long, it takes time out of my day, and statistically, it probably won’t make a difference, but the act of voting instills a sense of pride. It is your voice being heard. If anybody in your life ever complains about politics or the current government, ask them, “Did you vote?” If not, I say they are not in a position to complain. Like my favorite fictional president, Jed Bartlett, said, “Decisions are made by those who show up.” However, every time I go to vote, it seems to get more and more difficult. 

After graduating high school in 2020 and during the height of the COVID pandemic, my parent’s jobs were relocated to Atlanta, Georgia. Along with all the difficulties of moving years’ worth of possessions, there is an equally difficult task: changing residency. This means new car tags, new driver's licenses, and changing voter registration. Doing this during a pandemic that has shut down or reduced almost every government office certainly did not help the process. Cue the Mission Impossible theme music. About three months before election day, I needed to get a Georgia driver’s license, but to my dismay, there was a three-month appointment backlog at every Department of Driver Services office in Atlanta. After some online sleuthing, I found my opportunity 40 miles north of Atlanta, so I made the hour's drive to Canton. Two weeks later, courtesy of the US Postal Service, I was the proud owner of a Georgia photo ID. The next step, change my voter registration from Virginia to Georgia. After a few issues with the paperwork and another two-week wait, I was officially registered as a Fulton County Georgia voter and with two-weeks before the deadline, I was able to submit my absentee ballot request. Because I would be traveling during the election, I made a plan to pick up the absentee ballot at my friend’s apartment in Boulder, CO, and mail it back from there. One slight hiccup in the plan: when I arrived in Boulder my ballot wasn’t there. One hour-long phone call to the Fulton Board of Elections later, they agreed to send another. After another week of waiting, I finally pulled the ballot out of the mailbox and filled it out, and with a sigh of relief, I put a stamp on the envelope and dropped it in the mailbox. I made the deadline by four days. Seems like a lot of effort to vote, right? After that whole three-month experience, I was confident that there was no way I would ever miss an election. I was wrong. 

Fast-forward to the 2022 Georgia Elections, when Senator Raphael Warnock was back on the ballot running a tight race against Republican challenger Hershel Walker. This would also be the first election since Governor Brian Kemp signed SB 202, Georgia’s new “Election Integrity Act of 2021” bill into law. Passed along party lines shortly after Biden’s presidential win in Georgia, the 98 page omnibus bill makes a number of controversial changes to how elections are run and managed in the state. The changes were immediately apparent when I applied for an absentee ballot. Looking to get an early start, I tried to apply in early August but was met with a big no from the online portal. The 180 days period to apply for an absentee ballot before election day had been reduced to 78 days. The second time I went to fill out the online absentee ballot request, there was another surprise: The Pen and Ink Signature Law. In the previous election, I was able to complete the entire absentee ballot request online, but due to the newly implemented SB 202, I was now required to print the request, sign, scan, and submit the signed request through the online portal. While this new requirement seems small, think about how many people have direct access to a printer and scanner? More importantly, how does this change do anything to “protect” the vote? I didn’t have a printer or scanner in my room, so I walked over to Davis Library at UNC to finalize my ballot request. From there, the process worked relatively smoothly. I received my ballot twelve days before the election and was able to confirm its arrival at my Election Board Office. Despite a few impediments, I was once again able to vote, but similar to the last election cycle, Georgians had to go through the whole process again. No candidate had reached 50% of the vote. Let the runoff election begin. 

One would think, if a voter requested an absentee ballot for the general election, they probably will need another absentee ballot if a runoff election is required. Luckily for those of advanced age, severe disability, or those serving in the military overseas, there is an option on your original absentee ballot request to be automatically sent another! If you happen to not fall into any of these categories, such as an out-of-state college student like myself, you’re out of luck. Time to fill out another ballot request, but I had one problem. I didn’t have access to a printer and wouldn’t be back on campus until the Sunday after Thanksgiving. This wouldn’t be a problem, but thanks to SB 202, the nine-week runoff period had been shortened to only four weeks. That gave me a one-day window to submit my request by the November 28th deadline. Luckily, I was able to make it; however, in the days leading up to the election, I still had not received my ballot. In Georgia, that is a big deal, as all absentee ballots must arrive at the Elections Board Office by 7:00 pm on election day. Because of SB 202, election officials lacked the capacity to review and mail absentee ballots in the shortened time window. Officials in neighboring Cobb County even admitted that they made “critical errors'' leading to a delay in absentee ballots being mailed out and “let our voters down.” On the day of the election, I finally received my absentee ballot, but it was too little too late. I called my Election Board office in search of an alternative way to submit my ballot, but I was told there was nothing they could do. I was officially a disenfranchised voter. My next call was to the Georgia American Civil Liberties Union. I left a short voicemail and within thirty minutes I was on the phone pleading my case with a lawyer. While they had won a lawsuit to extend the deadline for absentee ballots for Cobb County, they were unsuccessful in Fulton County. They told me I was not the only voter who experienced this issue and was asked to fill out an affidavit to be used in a future lawsuit against SB 202. I did everything right, but my voting streak abruptly ended. 

So why did Georgia Republicans pass SB 202 in the first place? Based on recent Republican rhetoric on widespread election irregularities and voter fraud, one would think this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. This begs the question: how much voter fraud happens in any given election? This question can best be answered by elections expert and professor of constitutional law at Loyola Law School, Justin Levitt, who stated, “It is more likely that an American will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.” In his report, Levitt found an incident rate between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent, with the majority of incidents found to be clerical errors rather than individuals with malicious intent. The Heritage Foundation, a prominent right-wing think-tank, manages its own database of 1,412 proven instances of voter fraud. Almost 1,500 cases seem like a significant amount, right? Not really, especially when you look at the caveats. The database tracks instances back to the mid-1980s, and more importantly, only lists one proven instance of fraud in the 2020 election. So, if there is no statistically significant effect on elections due to fraud, why are Republicans creating “solutions” to a problem that doesn’t exist? More importantly, how many others have been disenfranchised in a fruitless effort to prevent a few cases of voter fraud? I used to love voting, but now I view the process of submitting a ballot as if I’m going into battle. It’s time we face the truth: Efforts for voter “integrity” is simply a poorly justified voter suppression campaign.