Southern states have shut down at least 868 polling places for 2016 election
This follows a Supreme Court decision that limits federal oversight of elections.
It’s a terrifying fact. The Voting Rights Act targeted policies that purposely kept black voters from the polls. But the US Supreme Court struck down part of the law in 2013, limiting the federal government’s oversight of states with long histories of suppressing minority voters.
As a result, states have passed more voting restrictions over the past several years — including controversial voter ID laws and cutbacks on early voting days and hours.
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But a new report from the Leadership Conference Education Fund, a civil rights organization, finds another potential effect: Counties previously monitored through the Voting Rights Act have closed down at least 868 polling places since the Supreme Court’s decision — a 16 percent reduction among the counties analyzed in the study. And out of 381 counties in the study, about 43 percent of them cut back on voting locations. (The report only looked at about half of the counties previously covered by the Voting Rights Act due to some limitations in the available data.)
…Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, the federal government could oversee state and local governments’ decisions to shut down polling places to ensure they weren’t meant to disenfranchise minority voters. Today, the federal government’s power is limited.
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