Voter suppression continues through the 2020 election
According to Britannica, voter suppression is “any legal or extralegal measure or strategy whose purpose or practical effect is to reduce voting, or registering to vote, by members of a targeted racial group, political party, or religious community.” Voter suppression occurred across the nation in order to deter voters from participating in this 2020 election. A variety of separate incidents, including ballot box burning and a possible shutdown of the U.S. Postal Service, took place throughout this year’s election cycle.
On Nov. 4 and 5 there was a call to stop counting votes in the states where ballots were presently being counted that had been projected to favor Joe Biden. Pres. Donald Trump first went on a Twitter rant about the come behind numbers.
On Oct. 18 in Baldwin Park, California, George Silva stopped his bike ride to record firefighters putting out the fire in the official ballot box. This resulted in the destruction of 100 ballots, leaving only one sanctioned ballot box in the city. All voters in the area were then urged to contact their city hall officials to make sure that their votes were getting counted.
In 2020, U.S. Postal services were not given additional COVID-19 relief funds and it was almost shut down as it would not have enough money to keep running. The U.S. Postal Service got its funding and over 31 million Americans could send in their ballots.
On Oct. 22, John Ratcliffe, the Director of National Intelligence, revealed that Russia and Iran had been behind a series of threatening emails sent out to voters. A series of emails across the U.S. had been sent to Democratic voters threatening them with violence to vote for Trump and saying they were a part of the far-right militia called the “Proud Boys”. This is false information and two foreign countries have gained access to the voter registration of over 150 million Americans.
