California Voter Suppression and Intimidation : an untold story of civic intimidation in the Golden State

Illustration by Kai Sase Ebens for Davis Political Review

Like many others, when I turned 18, I was excited. Turning 18 signified a stage beyond simply entering adulthood; it signified a new level unlocked in civic engagement and a way to participate in a process that for all the years before, I didn’t have access to. However, as I moved away from the conversation that I had centered around myself, it quickly became apparent why so many others were disillusioned by the process that would soon be carried over to me. 

California has long been galvanized as a place of liberal ideology and freedom to express -- to put it frankly, anything. However, just like many other places known for their blue bubbles, behind the facade, California is much like the rest of the country that has been plagued by historical voter suppression and intimidation. So much so that prior to the 2016 presidential election, California saw sweeping reform in order to make voting as accessible as possible. In October of 2015, California became the second state in the country approving automatic voter registration (AMV) to any eligible citizen who interacted with the DMV. Even prior to AMV, California preceded many with the implementation of Electronic Voter Registration (EMV) in the mid-1990s, Online Voter Registration and Election Day Registration in 2012, and implementing pre-registration for 16 and 17 year olds. However, even with all of the expansion for voter registration, the state still wound up suppressing votes. Why? State election codes. If they wanted to, any registered voter in California can request a ballot to vote-by-mail. In theory, that sounds great. However, not commonly known is the fact that the signature on the ballot MUST match the signature on the voter registration form or the ballot is not counted. These matches are checked by election officials sans any training or expertise in handwriting-analysis expertise. In the 2016 election alone, up to 46,000 ballots were thrown with a substantially higher rate of Asian Americans having their ballots thrown out; they were 15 percent more likely. In many of these cases, these voters didn’t know their votes had been discounted. When Sonoma County residents found out their mail in ballots were discounted, it was already July and impact as a result of the election had already been made. In a county where over 75 percent chose the mail-in ballot route, this has a staggering impact when most are unaware of previously held laws. Even more so, these laws unfairly target young voters, who may not have developed a permanent signature and do not have access to their registration signature, making it difficult to cross-reference even if they had tried. After a lawsuit and ruling in the higher California courts, the Secretary of State put the ruling on hold for the 2018 primary election and made note that in future elections, the office would provide voters, “a reasonable opportunity to verify their signature.” 

Today, California is one of a handful of states making drastic changes to the way that they’ve decided to conduct elections. Rather than putting election resources toward physical polling places and ballot boxes, there has been a reallocation of emphasis (and funds) onto mail-in voting -- as a result, slashing the number of poll places available. Although these changes have been made in order to better respond to an election during Coronavirus (and may be beneficial to many people), it also creates confusion and more struggle for others. This lack of ballot boxes also created an avenue for unofficial (and illegal) ballot collection systems. The California Republican Party sent a letter to the California Attorney General in early October resisting the demands by the State over the removal of the boxes, citing that they were another form of collection similar to actions done by the Democratic Party in ‘ballot harvesting’ during the 2018 midterm elections. The ‘harvesting’ that they are referring to is when party volunteers collected mail-in ballots and delivered groups of ballots to election offices on behalf of other voters. The ballots were signed and sealed by voters before they were collected in order to avoid fraud and aid older and disabled voters, who may not have been able to go directly to the polls. This resulted in an overall increase in voter participation. In this process, the voter knew who, when, where and how their ballot was being delivered. The California Republican Party stated that placing unofficial voting boxes was just an extension of the Democrat’s ‘ballot harvesting’ efforts. However, there are two things to note here : 1) the GOP is opposed to providing the locations of the ballot boxes, even after a cease-and-desist order by the California Attorney General when the state learned that the boxes were being placed in battleground territories and 2) prior to the Attorney General’s requests, one of the boxes had an “official” label on them. Voters have no insight on the life cycle of their ballot, and may not be able to track their ballot, unless it's submitted to an election office or polling location. To clarify, ballot collection is legal, if  the volunteer collecting the ballot signs the envelope showing the change of hands. However, a ballot will not be rejected if that signature is not there. The inadequacy in clarification continues a chain of restrictions that don’t actually stand and voters that know less than they started with. Regardless of if these deceiving signals are taken away, one thing is for certain, it is unbeknownst to the public how many ballots were placed in the official boxes and what the future of those ballots are, especially being weeks away from the election. Unofficial ballots are not the extent of it. On October 20th, an official ballot collection box outside of a public library in Baldwin Park, California was set on flames, making the deposit slot a chimney for the metal collection box. As firefighters pried the box open and quelled the flames, the arson made one idea very clear : actions such as these are a threat to democracy and small instances like this happening throughout the state add up.  The state has been complacent, been a talking piece of change to the press and been a part of lack of behind the scenes, and with less than a week out from the 2020 election, can’t do anything beyond “assure voters” that everything is being done to protect their right to vote. Yes, California has made strides in terms of registration but that’s not enough. Registration is a step towards voting but being registered to vote is not the same thing as voting. 

Voter intimidation is beyond individuals trying to engage at the polls. Tampering with ballots can happen even when everything is done under a watchful eye and in places where it’s least expected. When voters are discouraged, their voice is discouraged as well, keeping them from having a say in the political conversation. If this election has highlighted anything, it’s the importance of not only being active in the political conversation but being aware of how it not only affects you but also how it affects everyone around you. We are all mouthpieces of change; by working actively to undo what we speak against, we can collectively make change -- and isn’t that what it means to be young anyway