Opinion: Voter suppression Is no excuse

Yes, it’s an outrage. But it is not the main reason that voter turnout is so low. View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Tuesday, October 9, 2018 [NYTimes.com/Opinion »]( [David Leonhardt] David Leonhardt Op-Ed Columnist “My message in this upcoming election is very simple: It’s vote,” Barack Obama told his former speechwriter Jon Favreau [in a recent episode]( of “The Wilderness” podcast. “It’s not that much to ask.” “This isn’t really a 50-50 country. It’s like a 60-40 country,” Obama continued. “Democrats could and will do even better if every one of your listeners not only votes but makes sure that all your wishy-washy, excuse-making, Internet-surfing, TV-watching, grumbling-but-not-doing-nothing friends and family members get to the polls. Vote.” Obama was clearly smiling as he delivered the line. But as soon as I heard it, I knew the reaction that many progressives would likely have: Don’t blame us — blame voter suppression! It’s the same reaction that I’ve heard when I have written about the miserably low voter-turnout rates in midterm elections. I think that reaction is wrong. I think, to paraphrase Obama, it’s a form of excuse-making. And it’s not just factually wrong but politically damaging. It breeds nihilism. To be clear, voter suppression is a real problem, and it’s an outrage. Many of today’s Republicans — including those on the Supreme Court — have engaged in a deliberate campaign to make voting harder. They’ve reduced voting hours and added cumbersome identification requirements, among others things. (For more detail, Sarah Jackel of Vote.org and my colleague Stuart Thompson [have compiled a list]( and I’ve [previously written]( about voter suppression.) This kind of suppression certainly does depress turnout. But just as certainly, suppression is not the main reason that turnout remains so low. I’m confident about that for two primary reasons: First, the Republicans’ voter-suppression push has become far more intense in recent years. Following a Supreme Court ruling that threw out a central part of the Voting Rights Act, Southern states undertook a new suppression campaign. And yet if you look at the voter-turnout data, you don’t see a big change after 2013. Voter turnout is remarkably flat over time. [These historical charts]( from Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, show that stability. Turnout rises in presidential years, falls in midterm years and stays roughly constant over time. The recent spate of suppression laws has no doubt had an effect, but it’s not a dominant effect. The second reason involves the group that is the main target of voter-suppression laws: African-Americans. If suppression were really the primary force driving turnout, then African-Americans would have the lowest turnout rates. But they don’t — not even close. In 2016, the non-Hispanic black turnout rate was 59.9 percent, according to McDonald. That was below the non-Hispanic white turnout rate of 64.7 percent, but far above the Hispanic rate of 44.9 percent and the “other” (mostly Asian-American) rate of 46.3 rate. The black turnout rate was also well above the turnout rate for Americans aged 18 to 29: 43.4 percent. And these same broad patterns also held in 2014, 2010, 2004 and other years when Obama, the first black president, was not on the ballot. We should be able to hold two different ideas in our heads at once: Voter suppression is a injustice that violates American ideals; and voter suppression is not the No. 1 reason turnout rates are so low, especially among demographic groups that lean to the political left. Yes, there are many understandable reasons that Americans do not vote. They don’t think their vote matters. Or they are too tired to wait in line after a long day of work. But it’s possible to make progress in solving those problems — and to lift turnout. Just look at [what’s happened to turnout]( in many elections over the past year-and-a-half. This is no time for nihilism. Elsewhere: “Since Taylor Swift flexed her star power Sunday with an Instagram post that encouraged her 112 million followers to register to vote, Vote.org has experienced an unprecedented flood of new voter registrations nationwide,” [Claudia Rosenbaum and Michael Blackmon of BuzzFeed News]( report. “We are up to 65,000 registrations in a single 24-hour period,” Kamari Guthrie of [Vote.org]( said. By comparison, 190,178 new voters registered during the entirety of last month. The full Opinion report from The Times follows. [Coal Is Killing the Planet. 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