“Only two out of 12 of my friends are registered to vote” said Latasha Garrett, a volunteer for the Equity Alliance, a nonprofit group geared toward increasing minority voter participation and civic engagement. Minorities voting in America has been an uphill battle that continues to get harder as the years go by. In the 2016 presidential election, the minority vote made up only 26 percent of the overall casting according to the Pew Research Center. 

 

According to the Census, the African American vote saw a decline for the first time in 20 years during the last election. The Latino vote remained steady, but the male vote seemed to help our current president get elected. The Asian vote barely made up nine percent. This is due to tactics like voter purging, voter id laws, and gerrymandering. 

 

 

 

Voter purging is one of the many ways that minorities are blocked from taking part in the voting process. Purging is the removal of voter registration for various reasons with rules varying from state to state. In Tennessee, a voter can be removed for being a convicted felon, having a name change 90 days prior to the election, or missing two consecutive elections with a failure to respond to notice about it. The last voter report, which is taken every six months, showed that at least 350,000 voters were purged from the Tennessee registration back in June. During the 2004 presidential election was the first time this became a controversial problem, but as of July purging has been ruled legal by the Supreme Court. 

With voter purging hard at work stopping minorities from getting to the polls, laws affecting many people of color are also put in place. 

 

“We are a 40 percent Democratic state, every day. But you would not guess that from the laws that we pass,” said Attorney Kyle Mothershead, one of the panelist on the Souls to the Polls forum hosted by the Equity Alliance. 

 

 

 

Higher turnouts of African American people during the 2008 election changed things for many legislators around the country. However, the voting crisis didn’t strike in Tennessee until the 2014 midterm election where the state implemented the 2011 Voter ID Law that says to vote a person must have a government issued photo ID which could range from a driver’s license to a handgun carry permit with a photo. This law hit college students, African Americans and Hispanics the hardest. 

 

“Tennessee has the strictest voting laws in the country. We rank 40th in voter registration and 50th in voter turnout, and that is due to the Voter ID Law. We have senior citizens who never got a driver’s license or ID because it wasn’t required for them to vote. College students who may not have a state ID or license, which we are seeing more of. Then minorities in general who can’t get an ID. This law was designed to limit, and it is doing just that,” says president of Equity Alliance Charlane Oliver. The mission of her organization is to inform urban communities of the restrictions against them and help find a solution to the problem, so that they will get out and make their voice heard. 

 

 

 

During the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans took advantage of the Census year to go in on gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is the manipulation of electoral constituency boundaries to favor one party or class, in this case, the Republican party. 

“There are many cons to gerrymandering. But one of the most important is that the individual vote loses power,” said Junaid Odubeko, attorney and law professor at Vanderbilt University. 

 

While gerrymandering decreases the weight of the individual vote, it doesn’t just stop there. Gerrymandering also increases partisanship and polarization, makes races less competitive, and serves as the “break” of Congress leading to a rise of extremism. Gerrymandering is set to make things more difficult for minorities to vote and to systematically sway the vote in favor of the Republican party. 

Other strategies were also used to further halt the advancement of the Democrats in the House. The REDMAP Project created by Republican consultant and strategist Chris Jankowski was a strategic effort by the Republican State Leadership Committee, which Jankowski was the president of from February 2011 until February 2014, to win Republican control of state legislatures in the election right before the redistricting process for Congressional district lines. Following this project Republicans won all races they needed to control the key states’ redistricting. In 2012, Democrats got over one million more votes, but the Republicans gained 33 seats in the House of Representatives. The Republicans continue to find loop holes to keep minority voting under control.