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Arnold Schwarzenegger has supplied to pay to reopen closed polling places throughout the Southern United States.
The self-proclaimed ‘voting fanatic’ shared a 2019 article about how 1,200 polling places had closed all through the South since 2013. Schwarzenegger, 73, tweeted: ‘I’ve been pondering about this a lot. I’m a fanatic about voting. Most individuals name closing polls voter suppression. Some say it’s ‘budgetary.’ What if I made it simple & solved the budgetary situation? How a lot wouldn’t it price to reopen polling places? ‘This is a severe query. Is closing polling stations about making it more durable for minorities to vote, or is it due to budgets? If you say it is due to your funds, let’s speak.’
This is a serious question. Is closing polling stations about making it harder for minorities to vote, or is it because of budgets? If you say it’s because of your budget, let’s talk.
— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) September 2, 2020
Arnold Schwarzenegger attends the Japan premiere of ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ at Shinjuku Kabuki-cho Godzilla Road on November 06, 2019 in Tokyo, Japan The self-proclaimed ‘voting fanatic’ shared a 2019 article on his Twitter about how 1,200 polling places had closed all through the South since 2013. It comes amid considerations that the mail-in voting system might be swamped by the unprecedented variety of ballots it’s to obtain due to the pandemic. The Reuters article shared by the previous California governor cited a report which discovered that states with a historical past of racial discrimination had shut a whole bunch of voting places because the Supreme Court weakened a landmark voting-discrimination legislation in 2013.
Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, areas with a historical past of voting discrimination – similar to requiring African American or Hispanic voters to pay a ballot tax or cross a literacy take a look at – had first to persuade the U.S. Justice Department or a federal court docket that any election adjustments they wished to make wouldn’t have a discriminatory impact. The Supreme Court struck down that portion of the legislation in 2013. The legislation coated a swath of southern states stretching from Virginia to Texas, together with Arizona, Alaska and a few counties in states like New York, North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, South Dakota and California.
The excessive variety of ballot closures in these areas reveals that Congress wants to restore the protections that have been beforehand in place, in accordance to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. State election officers have cited a number of causes, from funds pressures to incapacity legal guidelines, for closing polling places, whereas officers in many components of Texas and Arizona have tried to shift from neighborhood-based polling places to ‘voter facilities’ that settle for ballots from all certified residents. Those states had the sharpest lower in polling places, in accordance to the report.
Election officers in Texas have closed greater than 1 in 10 voting places statewide, in accordance to information collected by the Leadership Conference’s schooling and analysis arm. In Arizona, a couple of in 5 polling places have been closed, the info confirmed. Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi closed roughly 1 in 20 polling places, whereas the declines have been much less dramatic in Alabama, Alaska and North Carolina. People vote on the US presidential election at Santa Monica City Hall on November 8, 2016 in Santa Monica, California
