The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way the world operates, but as the presidential election approaches, many states have failed to respond when it comes to voting. The safest way to vote during the pandemic is to vote by mail, but state restrictions block many voters from doing so. The ACLU has sued 10 states for restricting access, including Missouri, where the state legislature just voted to expand access in 2020. While the Missouri legislature win was a major step toward progress, the state is still restricting access by requiring most voters to notarize their mail-in ballots — which means they have to violate social distancing recommendations to vote by mail. 

The ACLU is fighting the notarization requirement on behalf of voters like Cecil Wattree and Javier Del Villar — two Missourians who joined the original lawsuit because they wanted to exercise their right to vote by mail. Cecil, Javier, and fellow Missouri voter Kamisha Webb shared their stories with the ACLU to show why voting by mail should be accessible — and safe  — for all. 

Vote by mail to protect Kamisha

For Kansas City resident Kamisha Webb, going to the polls could put her life in jeopardy. Kamisha has asthma and a condition called hereditary angioedema, which requires her to use a nebulizer machine, various medications, and biweekly injections to manage her health. A cold or flu could land her in the ICU. Contracting COVID-19 could be fatal.

Kamisha is doing everything she can to be safe. She stays at home on paid leave from her job because teleworking isn’t an option. She talks to her grandmother virtually, despite wanting to see her in person. But she’s worried she may not be able to take similar safety precautions when it comes to voting. 

“I feel like I have to choose whether to exercise my right to vote, or risk putting my life on the line,” she tells the ACLU. “And no one should have to mix the two, ever.”

Kamisha first learned about absentee voting when she overheard people signing up at a polling place during the 2018 midterm election. She learned that it was an option for people who are sick, for example, or have a disability that hinders their ability to vote in person. 

“I just thought, wow, that’s so cool to have a process in place for individuals to still vote if they’re not able to physically go to the polls,” Kamisha tells the ACLU. “It would be wonderful if we could take that same idea and make an exception due to COVID-19. Whether or not someone has a health condition, we have a deadly virus on the loose. We should all have the right to not only vote, but to be safe in doing that.”

People of color will likely be harmed most by restricting access to voting by mail. Voter suppression efforts already target people of color nationwide, and COVID-19 disproportionately affects people of color, particularly the Black community, to which Kamisha belongs. She attributes this to the prevalence of underlying health conditions, lack of access to health care and insurance, and discrimination in medical care. On the higher death rates in the Black community, Kamisha is “saddened, but not surprised.”

Kamisha joined the Missouri lawsuit not only because she is at risk, but because she believes everybody should be able to vote by mail during the pandemic. If the court rules in her favor, she says she will be overcome with joy: “I’m kind of filled with emotion just thinking about it.”

Vote by mail to protect Cecil’s daughter

By the time she turned eight, Cecil Wattree’s daughter, Allyn, had gone through open heart surgery, multiple strokes, was placed on a ventilator, and was on a waiting list for a heart transplant — among other ailments and surgeries resulting from her being born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. 

“It’s a gift of God that she recovered to the point where she is able to function,” says Cecil. “But it still leaves her immunocompromised when it comes to her lungs and her heart.” That makes Allyn high risk to COVID-19. When the ACLU sued Missouri, he joined the lawsuit, explaining, “I’m in a unique position to be able to advocate for my daughter.”

Cecil constantly worries about exposing his daughter to the virus, especially because he still has to go to work at a primary care clinic. The clinic has taken precautionary measures, and Cecil is being “super hyper vigilant” at home because of his daughter. 

“When I come home, I have to pretty much take all my clothes off in the garage or the cellar and then run into the bathroom and take a shower before I even see Allyn,” says Cecil. “Even after that, it’s a struggle to be safe when you have a highly affectionate eight year old who wants to be in your arms. I always worry that I might have encountered the virus in some way.”

It doesn’t help that as a Black man, Cecil has to navigate a world where his race directly impacts his ability to stay safe. He thinks twice about visiting a store wearing a mask in a white neighborhood. And he’s seen discrimination in medical care firsthand with his own daughter: “When Allyn had a stroke, the doctors didn’t believe she had one, even though she showed symptoms. I had to advocate so hard just to get them to look at her and give her a CT scan.” 

He worries about what this means when it comes to COVID-19, which has symptoms similar to the flu or cold: “How am I going to get them to take it seriously?”

Cecil wants to be as safe as possible and vote absentee in November — but having a vulnerable daughter, being Black, and being an essential worker doesn’t make you eligible in Missouri. 

“A lot of people have fought and died for my ability to vote,” says Cecil on why voting is so important to him. “Being able to vote by mail would give me a sense of protection while also ensuring that I can exercise my right to have a say in the direction this country’s going.”

No matter the outcome of the lawsuit, however, Cecil knows he’s privileged to have the option to vote in person when it comes down to the wire. “There are people who have no availability, no transportation, whose health is already compromised. To tell them to social distance while not allowing their voices to be heard is to take advantage of the current situation to suppress voters.”

Vote by mail to protect Javier’s community

As a 29 year old without pre-existing medical conditions, Javier is not considered by the CDC to be high risk to COVID-19. But Javier works for the national delivery service, making him an essential worker who comes into contact with the whole community on a daily basis. 

“In delivery, I feel like I’m helping people get what they need, because we do a lot of medical supply deliveries,” says Javier. “So it feels good. At the same time, it feels uncomfortable just knowing that the people receiving those deliveries are often out of work, while I am working.”

While millions of people have lost their jobs in the past few months, Javier’s work has gotten even busier, with longer hours and more packages delivered each day. He calls it “Christmas volume.” Due to stay-at-home orders in the community, he’s also encountering more people when he delivers packages to their homes. Often, they want to come out and talk to him. “You really get the vibe that people just want to talk and see someone and interact,” he says. 

He’s noticed a range in responses to COVID-19 safety measures in the people he encounters.

“Some customers wave through their window and then will come out with a bleach bottle and spray down the package I just left at their door. Parents will yell at their kids to not touch the package if they come running out. And then there are some people who will just pick up the package and take it inside like it’s any other day. Everyone’s handling it differently.”

Javier can’t control what others do, but he takes his own precautions like wearing latex gloves while working, even though it’s not required by his job. When a customer wants to chat, he tries to keep his distance. If he comes down with symptoms similar to COVID-19, like he did in March, he stays home. Javier does what he can to stay safe in all areas of his life, so he wants to do the same when it’s time to vote in November. 

He knew voting by mail would be the safest way to vote during the pandemic, but he was surprised to find out how restrictive Missouri’s absentee voting criteria are. He says it’s a concern for the people he encounters on his delivery route, too. 

“I’ve talked to a good amount of people about it within the last two weeks,” he explains. He thinks that people will be more likely to vote if they can do it from home with an absentee ballot — especially considering the pandemic. 

“Voting is a basic, fundamental part of a democracy and it needs to be viewed more as a celebration and an essential part of every American’s duty if you will, to vote or not vote, but it still should be looked at as like a national holiday.”
 
“I picture Missouri at the forefront of changing ideology in the United States,” says Javier. “If we’re able to do something progressive in Missouri, I think the rest of the country would be able to see that as a positive thing.”

The stories of Kamisha, Cecil, and Javier show why voting by mail is a necessary option for everyone, regardless of their circumstances. There have been bipartisan efforts to expand access to vote by mail in states including Alabama, Indiana, New Hampshire, New York, and West Virginia. States should take additional measures, such as expanding early vote periods, preparing for a surge in absentee ballots, and doing away with unnecessary requirements like getting a witness signature or having to pay for postage. At the same time, states must ensure safety for those who choose to vote in person as well as poll workers. Nobody should have to risk their health to vote. 

For information on how to vote by mail, see the absentee voting guide.

Leila Rafei, Content Strategist, ACLU

Police are supposed to “protect and serve” the community, but that’s a far cry from what modern-day policing often looks like in our country. The recent murders of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, George Floyd, and others highlight the need for drastic systemic change, yet again, as Americans across the country take to the streets in protest.

“The reason I’m out here is because I have two college degrees, but yet I’m still treated like I’m nothing,” one protester in Brooklyn told At Liberty this week. “I’m tired of hearing, there are a few rotten apples. There’s not a few rotten apples. The tree is rotten. The tree is rotten from the roots up.”

ACLU Policing Policy Advisor Paige Fernandez joined us on the podcast this week to walk us through the history of our problematic policing systems, and explains both why it’s so hard to hold police accountable, and how the ACLU plans to address this immense problem moving forward.

You can listen to the episode here:

Why is it so hard to hold police accountable?

Why is it so hard to hold police accountable?

Police are supposed to “protect and serve” the community, but that’s a far cry from what modern-day policing often looks like in our country. The recent murders of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, George Floyd, and others highlight the need for drasti...

Police are supposed to “protect and serve” the community, but that’s a far cry from what modern-day policing often looks like in our country. The recent murders of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, George Floyd, and others highlight the need for drasti...

Listen to this episode

Over the last week, ACLU staff across the country have worked as legal observers; educated protesters about their rights; been arrested, tear-gassed and hit with rubber bullets; challenged curfews; organized town halls; talked to victims of police abuse; donated money to Black Lives Matter, local bail funds and other groups; and strategized about transformational change.

The ACLU is busier than ever — let’s not forget this is happening amidst a pandemic and during the Trump administration — but we don’t hesitate to prioritize this work at this time because we have witnessed this reality of police violence all too often.

The ACLU’s advocacy against police violence began in the 1920s, shortly after our founding, and has continued for the next 100 years. In 1931, we spearheaded the issuance of a government report, “Lawlessness in Law Enforcement.” In 1965, in response to the Watts Rebellion, we opened our first storefront office to directly document police abuse. In 1991, following the police beatings of Rodney King, we launched a fight against racial profiling, resulting in litigation and a vibrant nationwide advocacy effort. In 2015, we published “Picking up the Pieces,” a report documenting biased policing in Minneapolis. ACLU reports from New York, Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, and Nebraska have all documented police departments that reserve their most aggressive enforcement for people of color generally — and Black people in particular.
 
Despite the tireless work done by so many in the ACLU to address police violence in communities of color, there’s a fundamental truth that we must confront: It has not worked. Black people continue to be murdered and brutalized by police with near impunity. More of the same won’t fix this problem.

As we look to the future, the ACLU unites behind the profound fight that groups like Movement for Black Lives have been leading: the fight for a completely reimagined vision of the role, presence, and responsibilities of police in America.
 
The fight will be complex, but in practice what we want can be clearly stated: We need to fundamentally change the role of police in our society, and that role has to be smaller, more circumscribed, and less funded with taxpayer dollars. Money saved from reducing the size and scope of police departments must be reinvested into community-based services that are better suited to respond to actual community needs. Doing so will foster improved safety and health outcomes, and present opportunities in Black communities, where decades of underinvestment in everything except police has helped fuel a mass incarceration crisis.

HOW WE GOT HERE

Let’s talk about policing the way we too often don’t. The underlying problem with policing isn’t just the lack of oversight policies, more training, and better procedures. While radically changing these three areas remains essential for harm reduction, the problem itself is more insidious.

The core problem is modern policing itself. The original sin of policing in this nation is its attachment to the nation’s first and most devastating sin: chattel slavery. Modern police forces in this country can be traced back to slave patrols used in Charleston, South Carolina. From their inception, police have been tasked with protecting power and privilege by exerting social control over Black people.

Built upon Jim Crow-era racist constructs, spurious social science, and sprawling legal codes, law enforcement has sought to control Black and Brown people through racialized targeting and the criminalization of Black people generally. Since inception, police in the U.S. have been empowered to act as an occupying force in low-income communities and communities of color across the country, funded by astronomical sums of taxpayer dollars.

Every three seconds a person is arrested in the United States. According to the FBI, of the 10.3 million arrests a year, only 5 percent are for offenses involving violence. All other arrests are for non-violent offenses — these include many relatively minor infractions like money forgery, the alleged crime that the cops who killed George Floyd arrived to investigate; or selling single cigarettes without a tax stamp, the crime Eric Garner lost his life for; or for marijuana or other drug possession.

There is a different world, one in which people need not be arrested for many of these offenses or be otherwise racially targeted and criminalized. We can shrink outsized and misused police power and responsibilities, along with their budgets, and strive to ensure they don’t come into regular, unnecessary contact with community members.

We know this is possible because this different world exists today, for communities that are largely white. The harsh reality is that policing in communities of color looks very different than it does in wealthy, white communities. In those communities, police are often only present when responding to specific serious disruptions to the community, rather than just constantly intruding on people’s everyday lives. To understand the impact of this approach, one only has to look at the approach to policing marijuana — which is used at almost equal rates by Black and white people, though Black people are still arrested at a rate that is almost four times that of white people. Racialized policing is the best way to understand this disparity.

White communities are also more likely to see significant investment in community resources that are purposefully and programmatically used to maintain safety, health, and stability, all without police intervention. The lived reality that white communities already enjoy and take for granted is what we are demanding for communities across the country — an end to over-policing, an end to constant surveillance and harassment, an end to enforcement of non-serious offenses, and an end to the targeting of people of color.

WHAT COMES NEXT

Our Vision for 21st Century policing can be accomplished for a fraction of what we currently spend. Current police budgets are enormous, totaling more than $115 billion per year, collectively. Spending on police and the criminal legal system has dramatically outpaced expenditures in community-based services that help people build stable, safe communities. We have an obligation to change this paradigm and support efforts in Black and Brown communities to develop and build community-controlled institutions and interventions that have been proven to improve public safety and health more effectively than oppressive, terrifying, ineffectual, and deadly modern policing.

There are few instances that warrant the deadly use of force we have witnessed in recent years. Certainly not “knee-to-neck” restraint for an allegedly counterfeit bill. Or a chokehold for selling loose cigarettes. Nor a fatal shooting for jaywalking. Or failing to comply with orders to put your hands above your head.

It’s time to prohibit the use of lethal force unless it is absolutely necessary. The “necessary” standard that was just enacted in California, offers an example that we hope to build off in other states and federally by adding an exhaustion of alternatives requirement. 

It’s time to embrace alternatives like civilian-led crisis intervention teams composed of highly trained professionals, including nurses, doctors, psychiatrists, and social workers, to respond to incidents with people who are in mental health crises.
 
It’s time to put more counselors and more teachers — not police — into our schools.
 
It’s time to stop criminalizing families experiencing homelessness.

That is the future worth fighting for. The health and wellbeing of our society depends on it, as do the values we have subscribed to as a nation.

Reducing funding to police departments and reinvesting those funds into Black and Brown communities are necessary steps to prevent further harm and to restore the promise of our Constitution for all people.
 
The ACLU will work to support Black- and Brown-led community organizations to implement a three-part formula to bring an end to our country’s long nightmare with police violence:

• Prohibiting police from enforcing a range of non-serious offenses, including issuing fines and making arrests for non-dangerous behaviors, thus eliminating many of the unnecessary interactions between the police and community members that have led to so much violence and so many deaths;
• Reinvesting savings from the current policing budgets into alternatives to policing that will keep local communities safe and help them thrive;
• Implementing enforceable legal constraints so that there will be only rare instances in which police officers can use force against community members.

These three steps are the most urgent, impactful steps we can take as a country to protect communities from police harm. Together with our partners and allies, the ACLU will help reimagine an effective and far more limited role for police in our country; implement changes that will save lives, advance civil rights and safeguard liberties; and create the conditions to start repairing decades of harm and violence inflicted on overpoliced communities of color.

Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director