“I couldn’t vote” stickers draw attention to the issue of voter suppression

New “I Couldn’t Vote” stickers have been released to draw attention to voter suppression. According to the voting rights organization VoteAmerica, which designed the sticker, it has partnered with Public Domain.

Rob Colucci and Zack Roif are co-founders of the initiative. Colucci likened it to the “I voted” sticker that many Americans receive after voting.

“We took over the ‘I voted’ sticker to really give a voice and a face to the millions of people who are suppressed by voting.”

– said Roif listening to the story people whose voices were suppressed caught his attention and prompted him to take motion.

“When you hear one story (of voter suppression), you can’t look away from the problem.”

The campaign uses multiple methods to educate residents about voter suppression, including in-person testimony.

VoteAmerica and Public Domain use stickers to raise awareness. Students from Georgia decided to protest.

BLACK ENTERPRISES reported on Georgia students marching on the Atlanta Morehouse campus to protest the SB201 Election Integrity Act, which was passed in 2021.

The law prohibits volunteers from giving voters water and food while waiting in long lines to vote.

Nicole Carty, executive director of the student organization Get Free, spoke about what she calls the law’s “inhumane” provisions.

“The actual criminalization of such an act of humanity and dignity is so clearly dehumanizing. It really illustrates the broader inhumanity and inequality of all these voter laws that are going on. It’s not just that you can’t give water. Many of the most insidious elements of these anti-voter laws lie deep in bureaucracy and Jim Crow. So we use it to shed light on what is dehumanizing about these laws.”

The reference to Jim Crow refers to policies intended to keep black people out of the ballot box. Policies reminiscent of the “grandfather clause” and the poll tax placed financial and historical barriers to voters.

Although restrictive policies began in the nineteenth century, they continued to be used well into the Jim Crow era.

“It was only President Lyndon B. Johnson who introduced the so-called Voting Rights Act of 1965, thanks to which Congress succeeded in putting an end to discriminatory practices,” Encyclopedia Britannica quotes.