Is Voter Supression Real?

 

Hello! Salut! Hola! Welcome back to Abbi's Cozy Corner. In today's post, I'll be addressing the idea of voter suppression and whether it is real. 

On Wednesday, I came across an article about a 94 year old woman who had traveled 300 miles to vote. Apparently, she lives in Detroit, but had been staying with her son in Illinois due to her health. She had requested a mail-in ballot but it never came. So then, her and her son decided to just make the 600 miles round trip back to Detroit so that she could vote. One of the biggest things that came up for me in this topic was why did this woman never receive her requested mail-in ballot? 

There are many examples of this happening, but this is the biggest example that stood out to me because of her age. A lot of the times when voter suppression is talked about, some people make it out to be mythical. As if it is not real or say that you are making accusations. But what else would you call it when you have to wait 11 hours just to cast a ballot because 3 out of the 5 machines are down. It discourages voting because who wants to wait 11 hours to vote. 

According to Brittanica.com, Voter suppression is "a strategy used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting". Taking into account this definition and all the examples that I am seeing in the news, it is my opinion that voter suppression does exist and something that we need to fight.  

Link to articles: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/19/politics/elderly-woman-travels-300-miles-to-vote-trnd/index.html