This Tuesday, millions of votes got tallied in presidential primary elections in more than a dozen states across the U.S. Although a major story was former Vice President Joe Biden’s victories in a slew of the contests, another more troubling issue also emerged — report after report of hours-long wait times just to get a chance to cast a ballot. Since 2012 alone, Texas — which is mostly led by the GOP — has completely closed a full 750 polling places, and elsewhere, voters in locales like Los Angeles also faced hours-long wait times thanks to issues like bungled rollouts of a new electronic voting system. Hillary Clinton denounced the mishaps as the modern-day equivalent of a “poll tax,” which in its original incarnation, was meant to keep marginalized communities like black Americans away from the polls.
In response to a post about a Texas voter who had to wait a full seven hours to cast their ballot, Hillary poignantly declared:
‘A seven-hour wait to vote is a poll tax. We need to restore the Voting Rights Act and stop Republican elected officials from shutting down polling sites.’
A seven-hour wait to vote is a poll tax.
We need to restore the Voting Rights Act and stop Republican elected officials from shutting down polling sites. https://t.co/qbGZRUctJM
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 4, 2020
Under the original provisions of the Voting Rights Act, southern states and other locales with histories of voter suppression had to get federal approval for major changes to the voting process. But since the Supreme Court overturned that specific requirement in 2013, southern states alone have closed nearly 1,200 polling places.
The fewer polling places that exist, the harder it is for people to cast their ballot, and Republican leaders have increased that difficulty even further with changes like the arbitrary demand of ID to vote that low income communities might not have access to.
Check out Twitter’s response…
