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MIAMI FLORIDA. The norm in a democracy is to try to get as many people as possible to vote.
When I meet Moncia Skoko Rodríguez, I realize that the United States is not an ordinary democracy.
– In the United States, we are very good at finding ways to prevent people from exercising their right to vote, he explains.
President Donald Trump is constantly claiming that the presidential elections are rigged. He said this before 2016 and has done the same before this election.
Trump is right. But not in the way he thinks himself.
The deception is not someone turning in too many extra ballots for a candidate or illegal immigrants who are not voting citizens.
The deception is that US citizens who are constitutionally entitled to vote in various ways are denied their right or that authorities and politicians make it difficult to exercise the right to vote.
Photo: Jim Bourg / TT NEWS AGENCY
United States: President Donald Trump.
One of those generally accepted hurdles in the United States is that you have to register to vote. Different states have different rules for when this should happen. Here in Florida, the deadline is almost a month in advance. If you want to vote for him but he’s not registered, you’re done.
Monica Skoko Rodríguez works for the organization Women Leauge of Voters, which sees it as her task to defend the right to vote. Kristoffer Hernandez from the ACLU civil rights organization, who sits next to her at the cafe where we meet, has similar goals.
A cleaning lady in a mouth guard walks around and cleans the floor inside the cafeteria and sprays disinfectant on all the tables, which then dries completely. Downtown Miami where we sit feels abandoned. Only a few people move through the streets even though it is late afternoon.
Photo: JERKER IVARSSON
Monica Skoko Rodríguez works for the League of Women Voters Miami.
Skoko and Hernández are experts on how suffrage is suppressed in the United States. And they see a clear pattern.
– Attempts to prevent people from voting are primarily aimed at minorities and the poor.
They both view their organizations as apolitical. Your job is not to help either the Democrats or the Republicans. They just want as many people to vote as possible.
But they are not hiding behind a chair that it is mainly the Republicans who are committed to suppressing the right to vote. Simply because it is the Republicans who benefit the most if the poor and minorities do not vote.
– Among blacks and low-income people in general, it is more common to vote Democrats.
Attempts to make voting difficult are clearly evident in the fact that in poor areas there is often a long distance between polling stations, leading to hour-long queues. What scares voters.
Previously, it was illegal to change electoral laws or close polling stations without permission from the courts, but that requirement was recently abolished by the conservative majority in the Supreme Court.
“Especially during a year in which we have a pandemic and the congestion in the polling stations is a health problem, it is unfortunate that the polling stations are closed,” says Hernández.
Photo: JERKER IVARSSON
Kristoffer Hernandez works for the ACLU civil rights organization.
Both Skoko and Hernández see postal voices as an excellent tool, especially during the pandemic.
– But in many states, you must have special reasons for getting a vote by mail or ordering your vote before a certain date.
The risk of cheating with the postal vote or of voting considers both to be negligible.
– In the last 20 years, countless investigations have been carried out and no more than 15 cases of fraud have been found. It is a much bigger problem that people are not allowed to vote or that their votes are annulled for various reasons.
Another method is to remove voters from the polls if they did not vote in the last election. Many states do not inform voters.
Gerrymandering is an advanced variant of vote manipulation which means that the ruling party in a state can redesign constituencies in a way that maximizes its own party’s chances of winning seats in Congress. Something both Democrats and Republicans do.
There is a long but not very beautiful tradition in the United States of trying to suppress the right to vote.
– It is said that women got the right vote in the United States a hundred years ago, but it only applied to white women, says Monica Skoko Rodríguez. Even in the 1960s, complicated language tests were used to prevent blacks and other minorities from voting.
The Electoral College system that decides the presidential election was created precisely to prevent the general public from voting for the “wrong” candidate. So, for example, Trump could become president in 2016 despite Hillary Clinton receiving three million more votes.
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