Person holding a ballot box imprinted with an image of U.S. flag on the side. Image by Mikhail Nilov via Pexels.
Aisnley Zapata is a political science and Spanish double major with a minor in sociology and a 2024-25 Government Ethics Fellow at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Views are her own.
Introduction
Since the 2020 Presidential election, there has been extensive discussion surrounding the security of American elections. This discussion took on a partisan divide, and even culminated in the belief that the election had been “stolen” from Donald Trump and prompted the January 6th capitol attack. Much less violent measures have also been taken to combat this perceived attack on election security, as we have seen many states implement new restrictive voting laws since the 2020 Presidential election. These laws have created new barriers to voting for the constituents of these counties and states, making it even more difficult for them to exercise their right to vote.
The paper seeks to answer the questions: 1) How do the stated goals of these laws compare with the tangible effects of these laws? 2) What are the ethical implications of passing these kinds of laws? Understanding the relationship between what lawmakers promised that these laws would do and what their actual effects were is critical to ensuring that every citizen is able to vote without impediment. These laws are meant to ensure that our elections are safe from fraudulent influence and prevent ineligible people from voting. However, there are certain laws that are simply meant to make it more difficult for people to vote, even if they are citizens and are eligible to vote. It can also be very difficult for someone who moves states, or even counties, to fully understand the voting laws in place in that location. Some laws apply to certain counties, while some are statewide, and not every state has the same requirements for voting. Some states do not require proof of identity to vote, while some require certain forms of identification to vote in person. Some states automatically enroll their citizens in mail-in voting, while in others a person has to prove their identity in person before being approved for a mail-in ballot. The complicated landscape of voting laws ordinarily makes it difficult for people to vote, and some of these new laws are unnecessary if they do not serve the purpose of security.
To explore these questions, this paper will explore prominent academic research on voting rights, Supreme Court cases, and a recent history of voting rights laws. In order to better understand today’s voting rights climate, we must first understand the historical events that led us to the present.
Literature Review
The political landscape surrounding voting rights has taken on a partisan divide than many in past decades would struggle to comprehend. To many, the right to vote is one of the most quintessential rights of an American citizen. Written into the Constitution and further solidified by the Fifteenth and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, these guarantees of the right to vote have been in place and strengthened over the past 100 years. However, in the past decade, there have been drastic changes to these voting rights laws that have left citizens vulnerable to these new laws passed in their states. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits eligible districts from changing their voting rights laws or procedures without authorization, or “preclearance.” (Shelby County v. Holder n.d.)Section 4(b) defined these districts as those that had a voting test in place as of November 1, 1964 and less than 50% turnout for the 1964 presidential election. These districts had to prove to a panel that these changes would not negatively impact an individual’s ability to vote in that district based on their race or minority status. The Supreme Court case of Shelby County V. Holder in 2013 ruled that Section 4(b) was unconstitutional and these districts do not have to obtain authorization in order to change their voting laws. The majority ruled that although these restrictions might have been necessary in the decades directly preceding the passage of the Voting Rights Act, they were no longer necessary and only put constraints on a state’s ability to govern. The formula for determining if a law needed federal review was also states having been able to pass new restrictive voter ID laws, enact redistricting processes, remove polling places, etc. that had previously been blocked by the preclearance clause in Section 5. This landmark decision paved the way for these kinds of laws to be passed in masse in recent years, and there are no plans in the future to strengthen the Voting Rights Act to block these types of laws.
The Election of 2020 is not the first time the country has seen widespread fears over the security of elections spur a crackdown on voting procedures. The Presidential Election of 2020 prompted many people to question the security of elections in all states, and it led to voting changes across many states.
There is evidence to prove that thousands of eligible voters were improperly purged from the voter rolls in Florida (Wang 2012), which ended up being very consequential for the results of that election. About 13% of names that were produced on the felon disenfranchisement list produced in January of 2000 were eligible to vote. The state also decided that it only required a 90% name match to remove a voter, and even when the company in charge of this process warned the state that this could lead to a high rate of false positives, they still chose to continue with a 90% match mandate. Furthermore, 65% of the people that were on these felon disenfranchisement lists were African American. The 2000 Election is a prime example of the ways in which voter eligibility laws can be manipulated to prevent certain people and populations from being able to vote, and the ripple effects that they can have on the election overall.
The passage of the 2002 Help America Vote Act included a provision that would require all first-time voters to show some form of voter ID at the polls. In 2006, Indiana became the first state to require that all people show photo ID at the polls in an effort to reduce voter fraud (Voris 2022). Many people expressed concern that this law would prevent minority voters from participating in elections, as a large number of minority voters do not have access to a photo ID. There is evidence to support this claim, as research that was conducted before the 2008 Presidential election showed that Black and Hispanic voters were four and three times more unlikely to produce an “acceptable” form of identification for voting (Parker et al. 2018).
Another important aspect to consider is the legislators that are creating and passing these kinds of restrictive voting laws. Previous research has found that white legislators (95%) were more likely than nonwhite (5%) legislators to introduce voting restrictions. Male legislators sponsored 77% of these voting restriction bills. Legislators in the South were also more likely than any other region to introduce voting restrictions (Adams, Cole 2023). There is also a distinct partisan divide in who is sponsoring these bills, with 92% of all restrictive voting bills being sponsored by a Republican legislator. It is clear from these results why so many people are worried about the impacts that these kinds of laws would have on marginalized communities. The people that are concerned about breaches in election security and want to increase restrictions on who can vote, when, and how, almost never represent them or their community. Given the history of voting rights in the United States and how much work had to be done to ensure that everyone got the right to vote, people are understandably concerned about what these new outcries for reforms could lead to.
These laws are proposed and passed in states across the country for many different reasons. One of these reasons was found to be concern over minority voter turnout, as areas with greater minority turnout in the previous two presidential elections were associated with higher percentages of restrictive voting laws being proposed (Bentele, O’Brian 2013). They also saw similar increases in states where there was a higher percentage of low-income voter turnout, and in states where there was a higher percentage of non-citizens. This same theme was reiterated when analyzing which states passed these kinds of laws, which also saw states with higher minority populations passing these kinds of laws more frequently. These findings support the claim that many of these laws are created and passed in fear of marginalized communities and their power when they vote. These trends continue to appear in today’s legislative landscape at both the state and federal level. This increased interest in the security and soundness of American elections in the recent half decade requires more research to determine what the underlying motivations are for this new wave of legislation.
Methodology
In order to explore this topic further, in this paper I will examine four individual states and their recent history of voting rights laws. This case study method will provide us with enough variety to examine the differences in each of their histories, while ensuring that there is not an overwhelming amount of data to sift through. I decided to focus on a small group of states that would give me an in-depth understanding of the evolution of restrictive voting laws that they passed since 2021 and what the trend of their effects are. I believe that being able to understand the trend over four years rather than trying to get a snapshot of a large number of states throughout the country will result in being able to draw more concrete conclusions about the ethical implications of these laws and how citizens can recognize them in the future. For these states, I have chosen to focus on Georgia, Arizona, Texas, and Florida. In these four states, there are two swing states and two solidly conservative states, all of which were very susceptible to the election security rhetoric espoused in the aftermath of the 2020 election, particularly in Arizona where recounts took up much of the public’s consciousness. In the years since 2021 to the present, these four states have a record of continuing to pass restrictive voting laws. In this analysis, I will be looking at what kinds of laws these state legislatures have chosen to pass since 2021 and compare the practical outcomes of these laws.
In choosing these states, I decided to look at which states had consistently passed restrictive voting laws since the beginning of 2021. I chose this time period because after the 2020 presidential election, there was a significant spike in the creation of restrictive voting laws. This has been attributed to the many people that spread their concerns over the security and legitimacy of the election. Whether it was because of mail-in voting or cases of voter fraud, concern over election security was at an all time high at the beginning of 2021. As a result of widespread panic over election security, many state legislatures and governors share the same beliefs as to why these laws are necessary. Therefore, the creation of these laws and their effects can be studied with a uniform understanding of exactly why they were created.
For the purpose of this project, restrictive voting laws are any law that makes it more difficult for citizens to vote. This includes decreasing access to vote by mail, removing voting centers and ballot boxes, making it harder to register to vote, increasing the restrictions on what kinds of identifications are accepted when registering or voting, and even prohibitions against handing out water bottles to people waiting in line to vote.
In this paper, the method of data collection and analysis is secondary data analysis. The primary database used to collect this data was the Brennan Center for Justice. Their extensive database containing the voting rights laws and trends of each state and the country as a whole proved incredibly informative for this project. This database provided the data for what kinds of laws were being passed, when, by what state, and the overall trends between 2021-2024.
It is my current belief that restrictive voting laws passed by state legislatures were more likely to disadvantage marginalized communities through methods such as restrictive ID requirements, removing polling places in certain neighborhoods, and decreasing registration windows. It is also my belief that the stated intentions of these laws lie primarily in maintaining the security of elections within the state. The point of interest for this study is when the stated goals of a particular law directly contrasts the predicted or practical outcomes of the law.
Data and Findings
In Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and Texas, there were 40 different restrictive voting laws passed across each of these states between 2021-2024. The highest total for a state in a single year was Texas in 2021, with 10 new restrictive voting laws. However, Georgia had the highest total number of laws passed across the four years, with 11 new laws. This is likely because of the controversy over the recount held in Georgia after the 2020 presidential election. Furthermore, these were only the laws that were passed by the state legislatures and approved by their respective governors. There were hundreds of similar restrictive voting laws that were proposed in these states but not passed. Some of these similarly restrictive laws that were passed and subsequently struck down were ruled to be racially disproportionate for voters of color.
Table 1
Totals by Year
| 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | Totals: 40 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arizona: 3 | Arizona: 4 | Arizona: 0 | Arizona: 1 | Arizona: 8 |
| Georgia: 5 | Georgia: 4 | Georgia: 1 | Georgia: 1 | Georgia: 11 |
| Texas: 10 | Texas: 0 | Texas: 2 | Texas: 0 | Texas: 12 |
| Florida: 6 | Florida: 1 | Florida: 2 | Florida: 0 | Florida: 9 |
A few particularly notable laws that were passed during this time were Georgia's S.B. 202 and Arizona’s S.B. 1485. In Georgia, the restrictions included in S.B. 202 were associated with one of the lowest turnout rates of Black voters in years. These new limitations included removing ballot boxes, restricting mail-in voting, and ID requirements made it much more difficult to vote. This bill also outlawed handing out food and water to voters waiting to vote in person, challenged voter eligibility, and removed mobile polling places that had been used in 2020. In Arizona, S.B. 1485 takes away the early voter lists and removes any voter that has not cast a ballot in a midterm election in the past two years. Restricting the early voting period affects the almost 80% of Arizonans that receive their ballots by mail (Arizona Governor Signs Bill Into Law Limiting Freedom to Vote Early 2021).
In almost all of these laws that were passed, increased election security and fear of voter fraud have been among the top reasons behind the passage of such laws. This rhetoric has appeared in Governor Brian Kemp’s statements about S.B. 202 when he argued that “This bill expands voting access, streamlines vote-counting procedures, and ensures election integrity.” We have also seen these laws go beyond the state level and reach the federal government. Congressman Chip Roy is a sponsor of the SAVE Act, which is purported to help secure the integrity of U.S. elections and prevent noncitizens from voting. The Congressman believes that “Radical progressive Democrats are taking drastic steps to fundamentally remake America through open borders, the release of millions of illegal aliens into our communities, and by waging a full-scale assault on election integrity laws.” The Congressman believes that that is why these types of laws are necessary.
The use of fear-based language is another common theme throughout the statements of support for these types of bills/laws, and typically hint at a larger goal behind the passage of these laws that is meant to target or disadvantage a specific group or community of people. This is also consistent with what has been found in previous research, as well as in line with what current lawmakers have been saying about the need for security. These statements typically have a fear mongering tone that hints at threats that are not proven. These statements also come at a time where there is increased fear of fraudulent voting by immigrants.
Ethical Implications
In looking at the ethical implications of this issue, I will be analyzing these laws through three different ethical lenses, the justice lens, the common good lens, and the rights lens.
The ethical analysis of this issue through the rights lens is two-fold. First, we can clearly see the restriction of a constitutionally guaranteed right all over the country, this phenomenon is not just contained to these four states. When this right is threatened, it brings into question the principle of “one man, one vote,” and whether or not certain votes count for more than others in our elections. Second, people have the right to maintain their dignity when voting. If people want to vote in a certain way, it should be the responsibility of the government to ensure that they are able to exercise this right with minimal barriers. These increasing restrictions are violating this right to choice, as well as compromising the right to vote, and sets a dangerous precedent for the future of elections in the United States.
The second ethical lens is the justice lens. These laws disproportionately affect marginalized communities. However, since 2021 lawmakers have used the excuse that these laws are necessary in order to protect against instances of fraud and ensure the security of elections. These laws make it difficult for individuals to exercise their right guaranteed to them by the Constitution. This means that in creating these laws, lawmakers are choosing which groups they are more concerned about getting justice for over others, so whose justice are they really concerned with? These representatives are elected to be the voice of their districts and pass legislation in their best interests. They are chosen to protect the rights of their constituents, but when those same representatives are choosing to create laws that deliberately take away the rights of others, they are explicitly deciding which of their constituents matters more than others. Or, even worse, that their own reelection matters more than the interests of their constituents. These types of restrictive laws are an injustice to the communities that they target and the candidates/representatives that are genuinely trying to represent their interests.
Finally, I will analyze this issue through the common good lens. The most common reason that these laws get created is supposed concerns over the security of elections in these states. Lawmakers understand what is in the bills they are passing, as well as how they are selling it to the voting public. These lawmakers are abusing the common good frame to advertise these laws to the public and convince them that they are necessary to protect their collective interests as Americans. Restricting these constitutional rights is never acceptable when the only “good” these lawmakers advance are their own.
Conclusions
Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not a new one. Placing subtle blame on people of color, disabled folks, poor folks, and other marginalized communities, lawmakers are able to play into fears of outsiders and create support for these laws. The importance of recognizing the goals of these laws and lawmakers is twofold.
First, voters must be able to recognize the strategies that are often employed in these laws and what their practical effects will be. Common strategies such as removing polling places, changing ID requirements, limiting mail-in voting windows typically have disproportionate effects on marginalized communities and can silence their votes in elections.
Second, there is a growing need for people to recognize these types of sentiments and what it actually means when lawmakers use them to justify these laws. Understanding what their stated goals are contrasted with what the law actually does gives a more complete picture of the tangible effects that these laws could have on an election.
When citizens are better able to recognize the signs of voter suppression, they are more likely to act to prevent it. This could mean voting against it as an initiative, contacting their representatives, staging protests, etc. Any sign that voters are aware of the contents of the bill could persuade some lawmakers to object to the bill. When people are aware of these phenomena they are better able to take a stand against these types of oppression. The need to protect the integrity of the democratic processes is greater now than it has been in recent years, and when the people are armed with the information to combat oppressive laws they can protect their voices and interests within the government.
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