Gerrymandering Isn't the Half of It

​By voting activist and Code Blue advocate Joyce Hackett -- 
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In 2013, the Supreme Court dismantled Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which had required states with a record of discrimination to get a judge's approval to change their voting practices. Since that disastrous decision, the GOP has flooded every state with suppression and intimidation bills. The fact that our Constitution doesn't guarantee citizens the right to vote, doesn't help. At every step in the process, we're seeing attempts to win elections by gaming them: registration; ID requirements; the number and location of polling places and the quality and age of the machines; the availability of early voting and longer voting hours, ballot design, the # of ballots discarded, the laws governing recounts. 30% of the country uses software that leaves no trace - their votes aren't just unverified, they're unverifiable.

Efforts to shrink the franchise have always come during periods of economic and/or immigration insecurity. These days, though, we've reached a tipping point. Election outcomes are being impacted on a national scale. This fall, for example, dozens of machines in Milwaukee broke, leaving it with 41K fewer votes than in '12, and an estimated 300K people in WI didn't have the required ID, which WI kept demanding even after a judge struck down the requirement. Hillary lost WI by 12K votes.

Our voting problems could fill an encyclopedia. Code Blue is among the groups working on the problem, though unfortunately it doesn't concentrate on Pennsylvania. Code Blue focuses on the basics: registration, access and verification, and partners with other voting orgs like Flippable and Sister Districts.
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See also this 2014 article from the Brennan Center for Justice How Bad Is It? Answer: Pretty Bad. 

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