Legislatures across US have placed hurdles to many would-be voters who would tend to cast their ballot for Democrats

In 2007 Charlie Crist, the then Republican governor of Florida, astonished political friend and foe alike by putting a stop to what he saw as the state’s iniquitous practice of withholding the vote from released prisoners. He announced that non-violent former felons who had done their time would automatically have their right to vote restored to them.



It was no small affair. In Florida, 1.3 million people have prior felony convictions, making this a very sizeable chunk of a total eligible electorate of 11 million. Former felons are disproportionately drawn from poor and minority communities, and as such, if they vote at all, they tend to lean Democratic, making the decision by a Republican governor all the more remarkable.

But it didn’t last long. Four years later, Crist’s successor as governor, the Tea Party favourite Rick Scott, made a point of reversing the decision.

That could prove crucial on 4 November for Florida’s GOP candidates, not least for Scott himself, who is in a bitter fight for re-election, with polls putting him neck-and-neck with his challenger – none other than Charlie Crist, now standing as a Democrat.

The Scott versus Crist race is perhaps the most glaring example of a nationwide trend that is bearing down on the midterm elections, now just two weeks away. Over the past four years, Republican leaders have exposed themselves to the charge of conflict of interest by introducing a raft of restrictive voting rules across 22 states, placing hurdles in the way of would-be voters, particularly from Democratic-leaning backgrounds.

“A lot of people are not going to be able to vote in this election because of Rick Scott,” said Katherine Culliton-Gonzalez, director of voter protection for the national racial justice group the Advancement Project. “We’ve seen time and time again instances of politicians implementing changes to the voting rules for their own political gain. There’s something wrong about that.”







A recently published academic paper reviewed voter ID laws introduced between 2001 and 2012. It found a striking correlation between tight elections and the prevalence of voter-ID restrictions brought in by Republicans.



The academics came up with a startling conclusion, that “where elections are competitive, the furtherance of restrictive voter ID laws is a means of maintaining Republican support while curtailing Democratic electoral gains”. The unspoken purpose of the rule changes, they found, was “to marginally curtail the participation of voters typically aligned with the Democratic party”.

Elisabeth MacNamara, president of the League of Women Voters, said that as head of a non-partisan voting rights organization she could not comment on the motives of those framing these new laws. But, she said, “Whether it was intentional or not, I can’t say, but these laws are creating conflicts of interest as they are passed by state officials who then stand for election under the same terms. We are very concerned that politicians are interfering with electoral processes for highly political purposes.”

For Wendy Weiser, head of the democracy program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, such conflicts of interest can only be dealt with by the courts. “It’s critically important for the fairness of our democratic system, and for people’s trust in it, that courts prevent politicians who have a stake in the outcome pushing through restrictions that prevent people voting.”

Among the tight contests where restrictive voting laws will be in place on 4 November having been introduced or supported by Republican politicians who stand to benefit personally from them are:

North Carolina, US Senate race

Incumbent senator Kay Hagan, a Democrat, is in a close race with Republican Thom Tillis (she leads him 48% to 43%, according to the Huffington Post’s poll aggregator), and commentators have suggested that the result may pivot on the turnout of the African American vote.

Tillis is speaker of North Carolina’s house of representatives and in that role was a key architect of HB 589, a new law that throws several obstacles in the way of voters, including a whittling down of early voting days, an end to the ability to register to vote and cast a ballot on the same day, and a prohibition on voting outside one’s home precinct. All those forms of voting – early, same-day, and out-of-precinct – are especially popular among Democratic-leaning African Americans.

The Guardian asked Tillis’s office to respond to the question of conflict of interest, but there was no immediate reply.

Kansas, secretary of state race

Secretary of state Kris Kobach is in a tooth-and-nail struggle for re-election against Democratic challenger Jean Schodorf. The election will be held under a controversial new law – pioneered by Kobach himself – that effectively strips the right to vote in state elections from anyone unable to produce proof of their US citizenship.

Kobach’s office did not immediately respond to Guardian questions about a possible conflict of interest. But it did tell the New York Times recently that 22,000 Kansans – most of whom are likely to be Democratic-leaning by dint of their having been immigrants – were in a state of electoral limbo having failed to negotiate the new citizenship hurdle placed in their way by Kobach himself.

Local polls put Schodorf ahead, but by only a statistically immaterial 3%.

Wisconsin, governor’s race

Incumbent Republican governor Scott Walker signed a new voter-ID law that demands a strict form of photo identification at polling stations. About 300,000 registered voters in the state currently do not meet the requirement – a substantial number given the whistle-tight race that Walker himself is locked in (48% to his Democratic challenger’s 47%).

Earlier this month the US supreme court blocked the new law. But voting rights experts fear that the confusion surrounding the temporarily frozen new rules will still act as a suppressant on election day.

Georgia, governor’s race

Sitting Republican governor Nathan Deal (47%) is barely ahead of Democratic contender Jason Carter, former president Jimmy Carter’s grandson (43%). Deal approved in 2011 a reduction in the number of early voting days and restrictions to voter registration drives.

Texas, governor’s race

Republican Greg Abbott is battling Democratic candidate Wendy Davis for the governor’s chair. Huffington Post’s poll aggregator puts Abbott comfortably ahead at 51% to Davis’s 39%, but if the race were close enough that the state’s new voter ID law, one of the toughest in the country, might have had some effect, it would have been due to Abbott’s efforts defending it in his role as the state’s attorney general.

The supreme court ruled on Saturday that the law, which imposes rigid photo-identification requirements on would-be voters, can go ahead in this year’s election cycle. The new conditions will impact all federal and state elections in Texas, including Abbott’s own.

In an earlier ruling, federal Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos had noted that more than 600,000 registered voters in Texas were vulnerable to losing their vote because they lacked the photo identification mandated by the new law. Of those, a disproportionate number, the judge found, were African American and Hispanic – groups that voted overwhelmingly Democratic (by 93% and 71% respectively, according to exit polls) in 2012.