Voting is the most powerful tool that Americans can use to empower their voices.
Rick Banks, former Black Leaders Organizing Communities (BLOC) political director, shared his thoughts in this piece about the state of voting in America. Banks also ran for Representative of Wisconsin’s 16th Assembly District. He has done interviews for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and many more. Banks also served as the Speaker of the Senate for UWM Student Government.
Banks started the conversation by stating the most noticeable fact is that most Americans do not vote, saying there is “a general apathy to politics. In the 2020 Presidential Election about a third of all Americans did not vote, according to Statistica. From a global perspective, after the 2016 election, the United States ranked 30 out of 35 for voter participation in functioning democracies according to a Pew Research Study.
Banks further explained that the majority of Americans do not vote in non-presidential elections where they would see the most immediate impact. Banks said Americans are turned off by politics because “they don’t see results. Politicians promise changes that they don’t have the power to do, for factors such as being in the minority party or not actually having the power to implement their promises.” Banks went on to explain that, “The elections people vote in, like the presidential, are the elections where the individual holds the least amount of power to influence the candidate for actual change. While the more local the election is, the easier it is to see true change.” Ninety-one thousand, nine-hundred and sixteen people voted in the Milwaukee 2020 Mayoral Election, according to Ballotpedia, compared to the nearly 247,700 people who voted in Milwaukee for the 2020 Presidential Election according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. That means over twice as many people voted for the 2020 Presidential election than the 2020 Mayoral election.
“Races are close in battleground states. Wisconsin was only decided by about 20 thousand voters. So, any vote that can be suppressed matters,” Banks says. 20,000 votes is about a percentage more Wisconsinites that voted for President-Elect Joe Biden (49.5%) over President Donald Trump (48.8%). “The closeness of Wisconsin elections is why voter suppression is such a predominant issue in the state’s politics,” says Banks.
Bank listed the three biggest voter suppression tactics in Wisconsin, and in similar battleground states, are Voter I.D. Laws, gerrymandering, and the disenfranchisement of former felons. Voter I.D. Laws may be the most controversial legislation in Wisconsin. Voter I.D. Laws require voters to have a formal state identification card to vote in state elections. The controversy behind Voter I.D Laws stems from several reasons. For example, a report from University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Ken Mayer states, “over 11 percent of voters eligible to cast a ballot but who did not, cited the voter ID as the deterrent, translating into between roughly 16,000 and 23,000 votes between Dane and Milwaukee counties.” Banks and Dr. Mayer agree that Voter I.D. Laws disproportionately target African American voters. Banks said that African American voters “are more at risk of a large group of the population not having state-issued identification than probably any other group.” Dr. Mayer’s report similarly found that a quarter of the people disenfranchised by the Voter I.D. Laws here in Wisconsin were African-American.
Gerrymandering is the second voter suppression method Banks listed. Gerrymandering is the practice of dividing or arranging a territorial unit into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Historically, Voter I.D. Laws have been a Republican tactic of voter suppression; however, Democrats and Republicans alike have taken part in gerrymandering. Currently, in Wisconsin, Republicans have been the main offenders of using gerrymandering according to Banks. Banks stated that in Wisconsin “Democrats are being split into Republican-controlled Districts. Making our political races less competitive.” State Democrats argue that gerrymandering influenced the 2020 State Assembly Election results where, “Democratic candidates received 46% of total votes cast in state Assembly races, but ended up with only 38 of 99 seats,” Gerrymandering is not just a Wisconsin issue, Democrats in Pennsylvania and North Carolina both went to federal court to challenge the Republican-led gerrymandering inside their states. Gerrymandering creates a rigged system that makes the controlling party candidate far more likely to win, according to Banks. Banks described the effect it has on voters with this illustration: “Voters lose enthusiasm for races because gerrymandering takes away the competitiveness of the race. Imagine trying to watch a season of NBA games but you already know who will win every game.”
Banks pointed to a loss of voting rights for felons as another form of voter suppression. “There is a huge disenfranchisement of former felons in this country. Why should someone who served their time not be allowed to vote?” Banks said. In 21 states felons lose the right to vote while incarcerated and for a period of time after the release and in 11 states voting rights may be lost indefinitely. This results in 5.1 million Americans losing their right to vote and disproportionately harming African-Americans where one in 16 have been disenfranchised by felony voting laws alone as of 2020. Advocates fighting for the restoration of voting rights for former felons and current felons have gained recent results in states like Florida, Iowa and New Jersey. Additionally, Washington D.C. joined Maine and Vermont in allowing all people to vote regardless of incarceration status.
“Politicians and people in power know the power of suppressing the vote,” said Banks. “The Democratic Party kicking the Green Party off the ballot in 2020 was voter suppression and without that tactic, they may have lost Wisconsin.” Banks said two of the biggest factors for improving voting in America are political education and changing the narrative on voter fraud. Banks defines political education as “connecting things that people care about to politics.” Annenberg Public Policy reported that only 25% of Americans can name the three branches of government. To the point about changing the narrative by asking supporters of vote suppressing legislation, Banks said it “is stopping a few cases of potential voter fraud worth suppressing 100 thousand voters?” The Brennan Center Truth About Voter Fraud report stated, “found incident (voter fraud) rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent.”
Banks stressed that the future of American Elections can be saved with rank voting. Ranked voting allows the electorate the ability to rank the candidates they prefer, which frees voters from the stranglehold of the two-party system and having to vote for “the lesser of two evils.”
Banks warned that “Republican actors are egregious to Democracy but the biggest danger is big money. When over 60% of Americans support universal healthcare, but Congress says no, that is a red flag.”