One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy

by Carol Anderson

Kobach, therefore, suspended the right to vote of 35,314 Kansans because they could not produce “proof of U.S. citizenship.” More than 12,000 of those he simply purged outright because the disparate access to citizenship documents played right into Kobach’s belief about who is American and who is not, and thus who has the right to vote. He “associated minority voters with ‘ethnic cleansing’ … [in] a conspiracy to ‘replace American voters with illegal aliens.’ ” The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights rightfully concluded that the SAFE Act “may disparately impact voters on the basis of age, sex, disability, race, income level and affiliation.” And, the commission continued, what it costs, especially for the poor, to obtain a passport or a birth certificate is a “barrier” that amounts to “an unconstitutional poll tax.” A contemptuous Kobach sneered that the commission’s report “is not worth the paper that it was written on.”52 Yet a study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that “7 percent of Americans, mostly minorities, do not have these [citizenship] documents readily available.” Moreover, as scholar Chelsie Bright explained, “it is unclear that proof of citizenship requirements actually add any real value to the integrity of the election process. Federal law already requires that individuals registering to vote affirm in writing that they are a U.S. citizen. Lying carries serious criminal penalties. Further, research consistently finds that voting by noncitizens is extre...