The War on Voting Is a War on Women
The assault on voting rights is a naked attempt to suppress the votes of minorities, students, the elderly, and the poor. But don’t be fooled. This War on Voting is an essential part of the War on Women.
Nowhere is that clearer than in the recent wave of efforts to disenfranchise voters through strict voter identification laws, limits on early voting, and elimination of same-day voter registration across the country. And since the Supreme Court’s vicious undercutting of the Voting Rights Act last June in Shelby County v. Holder, we are facing even more of an onslaught.
In states like North Carolina, which has enacted a strict photo identification law, one cannot cast a ballot without presenting particular forms of government-issued photo ID. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 25% of eligible African-American voters and 16% of Hispanics do not have such an ID. In addition, 18% of people over the age of 65 do not have a current ID, and although most students have an ID card issued by their college or university, many do not have government issued-ID that would allow them to vote in these states, Politico reports
What is not commonly known, however, is that women are among those most affected by voter ID laws. In one survey, 66% of women voters had an ID that reflected their current name, according to the Brennan Center. The other 34% of women would have to present both a birth certificate and proof of marriage, divorce, or name change in order to vote, a task that is particularly onerous for elderly women and costly for poor women who may have to pay to access these records.