In November 2004 I was 18 years old, a college freshman voting in my first election. I was excited because it was an important election and I was voting in a swing state, in a small college town in rural Ohio, where every news source claimed the election would be decided. When I arrived at my voting precinct on Election Day, I found a line that snaked through every room in the building, doubling back on itself and ending outside in the frigid rain. I waited in line for six hours before reaching the front, where I saw that only two voting booths had been allocated for around 1800 voters, compared to one booth per 100 voters in Republican-heavy districts. I missed a class and dinner in order to vote, and in the end, my candidate conceded the election before the ballots that we had waited hours in line to cast were fully counted. I found out later that the six- to 10-hour waits at my precinct had occurred all around Ohio, but almost exclusively in college towns and in majority-black precincts. The under-allocation of voting booths was part of a strategy used by Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who was serving simultaneously as co-chair of the Bush Campaign in Ohio, to systematically suppress votes from Democratic constituencies. That night Ohio went to Bush by a 2-percent margin, giving him a second term, and I stopped believing that elections in America were fair or truly democratic.

Four years later, I graduated into the worst recession since the Depression. Like many other young people, I came back home to live with my mom, and after six months of searching unsuccessfully for a job that would use my degree, I took an unpaid internship and a part-time job at a coffee shop. Three-and-a-half years after that, young people continue to bear the brunt of the effects of the recession. Youth unemployment has increased far more than in any other age group, and starting wages are depressed as entry-level jobs have transformed into unpaid internships, accessible only to those whose parents can subsidize their living expenses. Tuition at public universities increases every year, even as subsidized educational loans and grants shrink or disappear entirely, leaving young people saddled with enormous debt. Many people I graduated with are still living at home, searching for a job that justifies, financially and intellectually, the time, effort and money they put into earning a degree. They are the base of the Occupy movement.

If you don’t see the connection between what happened in 2004 and 2008, let me explain. Though we like to say that democratically elected officials are accountable to the people, it is more accurate to say they are accountable to the voters. The deliberate disenfranchisement of college students that I experienced in 2004 is an example of how democratic accountability is minimized by manipulating which segments of the population are over- or under-represented among voters. Laws or directives that make it difficult for members of certain groups to vote — whether they be college students, people who are poor, ethnic and language minorities or people who have been incarcerated — reduce the need for politicians (of either party) to advocate for the groups’ needs in order to retain their support in the next election. Why are the needs of young people, the struggling masses and minorities deprioritized in American public policy? Because they don’t vote. Why don’t they vote? Because our political institutions are designed specifically to discourage it.

Attempts to disenfranchise traditionally Democratic constituencies have become increasingly common, justified by specious and unsubstantiated concerns about voter fraud. Most states require voters to reregister every time they change addresses, and thirty-one states currently or by 2012 will require voters to show ID before casting a ballot. Several states have abolished early voting, which allowed people who aren’t able to make it to the polls on Election Day to vote at a more convenient time, and some states are now restricting which organizations can register people to vote. Young people, particularly college students, and ethnic minorities move often, are far more likely to lack forms of ID accepted under the most stringent voter ID laws and are major users of early voting options, when available. They also tend to vote for Democrats, a fact not lost on the Republican-controlled state legislatures that have passed nearly all of these restrictive voting laws.

Political and economic inequality in America are intimately linked. Political inequality maintains the structures that support the growth of economic inequality, and economic inequality perpetuates the gap in political influence between the 1 percent and the 99 percent. The Occupy movement has finally brought this truth into public discourse. Now we must focus on developing concrete goals for challenging this system. Repealing all laws that place onerous burdens on citizens attempting to exercise their right to vote and holding public officials accountable for discriminatory practices that result in unequal access to the vote — that would be a good place to start.

Frances Zlotnick
Ph.D. Candidate, Political Science