🚨 🚨 WHITEBOARD: Voter Registration Manipulation A 🧵 There is a Death Star hovering over American elections and democracy at the moment A threat as great as any suppression tactic we’ve seen in a long time But one well know in the annals of our history— WATCH & RT 1/

and at our nation’s darkest moments. Right now, most see it largely as the so-called SAVE Act, along with the president’s outrageous executive order that one federal court has already ruled to be illegal. 2/

But because of that court decision, and the the belief that a filibuster may stop the SAVE Act for the time being, people have some hope that these actions may not take effect. But do NOT fall for that! 3/

The truth is, those two actions are part of a far broader assault. States across the country are moving fiercely in the same direction, with Ohio as one of 24 states pushing a SAVE Act-style bill in the coming weeks or months, with three other states 4/

Louisiana, New Hampshire and Wyoming) having recently passed them. (This is how Laboratories of Autocracy work). And we need to start calling it by what it really is: voter registration manipulation. 5/

And history tells us that that is a form of voter suppression that truly slashes at the jugular vein of American democracy. By narrowing or closing entirely the front door into the electorate, forms of voter registration manipulation have proven to be among the most 6/

damaging to a fully inclusive democracy over the centuries, reducing overall involvement in our democracy—especially voters of color, new American communities, and women. It’s the tool that did much of the work to destroy Reconstruction and build Jim Crow, 7/

all while reducing overall participation in America’s democracy to a level well below other nations. The recent wave of voter registration manipulation renews this oppressive and brutally effective tactic, driven by similar fears and disguised with similar myths and lies. 8/

We just aren’t calling it by its name. We must. Backdrop: Registration as the Front Door to Democracy Going back centuries, the battle over America’s democracy is in many ways a battle over the process of voter registration. 9/

We take it for granted now, but the step all citizens must take prior to actually voting—better thought of as “pre-registration”—has essentially served as the front door to democracy for most of our history. 10/

How widely that door is open or closed, and who gets to enter it, determine the size and shape of the American electorate. And if you’re not even in that (registered) electorate, you basically aren’t part of our democracy whatsoever. 11/

At the peaks of our democracy, spirited and aggressive registration efforts have expanded the electorate—in size and diversity—nearly overnight. A military-led registration drive following the Civil War allowed hundreds of thousands of newly freed 12/

slaves to enter American democracy, which upended Southern politics. A similar drive happened immediately following the Voting Rights Act, when federal registrars registered huge numbers of long-suppressed Black voters & old tactics of registration manipulation were outlawed 13/

On the flip side, disastrous declines of participation have followed periods where anti-democracy forces clamped down on the registration process , or closed it outright—wielding it as a weapon against certain groups & in a way that dramatically reduced overall participation 14/

In the early 1800s, concerns about Catholic-Irish immigrants corrupting American elections led to a voter registration process in the first place. As my old friend and now professor Gregory Downs explained a few years ago, even basic registration had a suppressive effect: 15/

“Requiring [voters] to go on one day to register to vote and then to go again to vote” had three impacts: (*remember these—they are still relevant) 1) “Increased the Literal “Opportunity cost” of voting…two times, especially during work days” 16/

2) “requires a longer period of time in which you can demonstrate a stability of address…if you register in one location and move to a different district in the months in between, you’ve self-disfranchised,” and this need for residential stability 17/

“specifically aim[ed] to capture a group that is…marginal, or moving among different forms of temporary housing” 3) requires citizens to go “to confront representatives of the established order” 18/

(city hall, a political registrar, etc.) as opposed to “show[ing] up on the day of and to vot[ing]” Add in literacy and English language tests, durational residency requirements, and other obstacles that could directly target certain populations… 19/

some only applied to certain cities), and the shaping of the registration processes shaped democracy itself. And excluded many, as intended. While these steps ebbed and flowed in the North depending on the era (and new waves of immigrants), over 20/

time, they led to an overall diminished participation level. BUT….when white Democrats in the South were looking for ways to crush the new Black participation in Southern elections 21/

during Reconstruction, the North’s use of registration to suppress immigrants provided a perfect model. So, starting in Mississippi, new Southern governments imposed it to great effect, 22/

adding not just a registration process—and requiring all voters to register anew—but added a wide variety of hurdles, including literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses (waiving hurdles for white voters), etc. 23/

The shutting off of voting through registration manipulation worked to brutal effect. As I’ve explained elsewhere (and in my first whiteboard ever), it was a central part of wiping out high Black registration and voting rates in the 1870s and 1880s, 24/

down to almost 0 by the 20th century. Lousiana’s number of registered Black voters, for example, fell from 130,000 to 730. And this of course meant actual voting cratered as well. As Professor Downs summarizes— 25/

in 1880, every Southern state saw between a 40% to 80% Black voter rate in elections; by 1912, every Southern state had a Black voting rate of 3% of lower. (Alabama fell from 55% to 2%; Florida from 84% to 2%; North Carolina from 81% to 1%.) Tragic. 26/

That lack of voting is what allowed the rest of Jim Crow to kick in for lifetimes…until, back to our theme, the Voting Rights Act re-opened the voter registration process and actively registered huge numbers of those excluded voters. The Lesson: So, take heed. 27/

As Professor Downs says: “Registration is secretly the place that voter disfranchisement has happened in American history, even though it sits off stage.” And right now, it’s exactly what they’re trying to repeat under the lie that non-citizens are voting in huge numbers. 28/

As I explain in the whiteboard above, and previously, 95% of the ways that we all choose to register and re-register would be rendered functionally illegal by these laws, including: online voter registration automatic voter registration (AVR) Mail-in registration 29/

voter registration by third parties and non-profit groups registration by parties or campaigns all on-line BMV registrations: and any in-person BMV appointments where the voter has not brought the IDs required beyond their updated drivers’ licenses 30/

Instead, every registration or re-registration (or undoing of a purge) would have to take place by traveling and waiting in line at a county elections office, which for most citizens is less convenient— 31/