Opinion

Bimpe Archer: Voter suppression in America shows we shouldn't take democratic rights for granted

<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: sans-serif, Arial, Verdana, &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;; ">What is absolutely shameful is that here one in three people eligible didn&rsquo;t bother to vote for the fellow citizens &ndash; in Stormont and at Westminster &ndash; who we are now relying on to keep us alive during a deadly pandemic</span>
What is absolutely shameful is that here one in three people eligible didn’t bother to vote for the fellow citizens – in Stormont and at What is absolutely shameful is that here one in three people eligible didn’t bother to vote for the fellow citizens – in Stormont and at Westminster – who we are now relying on to keep us alive during a deadly pandemic

I NEARLY didn’t vote last December.

It was back when I used to work in an office and was on the way home. It was dark and cold and they’d shifted me to a polling station I was unfamiliar with.

It was also the seventh trip to a ballot box since 2016 and I was feeling tired and huffy. [Well, I thought I was feeling tired and huffy - reflecting on negative pre-pandemic emotion is like looking at a faded photograph. In truth, I did not know what tired and huffy felt like back then. Or furious. Or harried. Or confused. But that’s a different column].

READ MORE: Alex Kane: Essential the executive stands as one on pandemicOpens in new window ]

I brought my ID and drove home via the appointed church hall `just in case’.

It would have taken very little to put me off. And as usual there was very little to put me off – an abundance of convenient parking spaces, minutes from my home, no queues… Because it was a single-seat General Election, there weren’t even any last minute campaigners thrusting irritating `example ballots’ at me.

I pulled my car off the road, trotted inside, marked my `x’, posted my ballot and continued home for my dinner.

My experience was replicated across Northern Ireland, and indeed the rest of the UK that day.

Watching the scenes in America this week has made be ashamed of how much I take that for granted.

My social media feed has been flooded with images of voters in Georgia standing in hours-long lines after flocking to the polls for the first day of early voting.

In Atlanta, some people documented waiting more than 10 hours to cast their ballot.

They were determined to wait “as long as it takes” because they are the foot soldiers in a war against US voter suppression.

In 2019, researchers used smartphone data to quantify the racial disparity in waiting times at polls across the country and found residents of entirely-black neighbourhoods waited 29 per cent longer to vote and were 74 per cent more likely to spend more than 30 minutes voting.

It backed the findings of a study two years earlier which found non-white voters seven times more likely to wait in line for more than an hour to vote “because election officials send more resources to white polling precincts”.

Bimpe Archer
Bimpe Archer Bimpe Archer

The process is further skewed by the lack of places to vote.

There were 868 polling place closures between 2012-2018 in areas identified as populated by communities of colour - forcing people to travel longer distances to more congested voting stations.

It takes a more determined person than many of us are to endure that and still consider doing it all again four years later, and indeed research shows `waiting in a line makes you less likely to turn out in subsequent US presidential elections’.

And given that even after that effort Donald Trump took the White House by 74 Electoral College votes, despite Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote by 2.9 million, those foregoing a day’s wage to vote deserve our respect.

It is no wonder that the 2016 presidential election saw just a 55.5 per cent turnout.

What is absolutely shameful is that here one in three people eligible didn’t bother to vote for the fellow citizens – in Stormont and at Westminster – who we are now relying on to keep us alive during a deadly pandemic.

In North Down turnout was just 59.2 per cent for the assembly elections, with Fermanagh & South Tyrone posting the highest 72.6 per cent - meaning one in four stayed at home.

For Westminster elections the lowest saw barely half of people (56.3) bother to visit a polling station in Strangford and fewer than previously (70.1) in Fermanagh & South Tyrone.

No one was asking us to queue for hours, just take a few minutes out of our day at any time between 7am and 10pm.

Something those being robbed of their votes in America right now can only dream of.