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  The Interpreter newsletter, by Max Fisher and Amanda Taub

What’s the longest you’ve ever had to stand    in line to vote?

If you live in a wealthy democratic country    that isn’t the United States, that probably seems like an odd question.    It’s like being asked about the longest you’ve ever had to stand in line at    a supermarket checkout. Sure, maybe there’s been a crowded day on occasion.    But the wait was never long enough to keep track of, much less remember    later when pressed by some lady writing an email newsletter.                        

 It’s different in the United States. For many American voters, casting a ballot is a task that requires careful  planning, physical endurance, and an investment of at least time and often    also money in the form of lost wages. And that burden is, like so many    other things, much heavier on Black communities. A 2017 study    found that Black voters reported waiting twice as long as white voters to    cast their ballots. A 2019 working paper    used cellphone data to measure wait times, and found that voters in    entirely Black neighborhoods waited 29 percent longer to vote and were 74    percent more likely to wait for more than 30 minutes than those in white    neighborhoods.

That this is tolerated at all, and for so    long, communicates a disturbing comfort with voter suppression. Americans    have become inured to this, I think. I feel that I have, too — even though    I have more experience than most with how bad the problems can be. I used    to volunteer as an election-protection lawyer, answering hotline calls and    observing polling places to make sure that voters weren’t being turned  away.  

One of my proudest moments as a young    attorney was when I helped a woman vote using a marijuana citation as a    proof of residency (It included her name, address and date of birth! It was    an official government document! Boom, lawyered.) But even though I    was so concerned about voter suppression that I took time off work to help    combat it, and even though I was specifically trained to spot these    problems, I don’t recall ever taking a step back to wonder why my efforts  were necessary at all.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t imagine a    world in which there were plenty of opportunities for everyone to vote without    hassle or stress. It just never even occurred to me to try.

Which is, I think, an under-discussed    element of the whole problem. In a political culture where acceptance of    low voter turnout is that ingrained, voting gets treated like something    that’s not really that desirable anyway.

The Knight Foundation recently published a report    about nonvoters in America, and one particular finding stood out to me:    nearly half of nonvoters said that had never been asked to vote at any    point in their lives. Not by a parent. Not by a friend. Not by a    teacher, or church, or workplace. Not even by a political campaign. And,    just as shocking, among those who had voted, the numbers were only    slightly better: only 62 percent had ever been asked to vote. 

No one ever asked! In a country that prides    itself on being a beacon of democracy and exceptionalism, approximately 40    percent of the electorate had never even encountered the suggestion that    they ought to cast a ballot.

It’s easy to see how small a step it is from    accepting that only the most motivated and civic-minded citizens to vote to    imagining that voter suppression isn’t really that big a deal. 

After all, if voting is a chore, then who’s    to say whether low turnout is because of restrictive I.D. requirements,    long lines, polling station closures, and all of the other things that make    it more difficult for people to cast their ballots, or if maybe people just    weren’t that motivated to vote in the first place?

But comparing the United States with other    countries is a stark reminder that voting feels like a chore because of choices America has made. 

In Australia, where over 90 percent of registered voters voted in 2016, voting is mandatory, and citizens who    don’t show may incur small fines. But many polling places also have    carnivalesque atmospheres, with portable barbecues grilling hot “democracy    sausages” and stands selling treats. In Scandinavian countries, where    turnout is around 80 percent, voter registration is automatic, and the    government contacts voters to notify them of their polling places and    remind them to vote.

And so would I, if I were them.  Read Tears We Cannot Stop  A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson for more on this thought.

I highly encourage you to read Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s speech from the floor this past week.