Abstract
While elections are being cancelled due to coronavirus,
At the end of February, Rita Nabukenya, a supporter of the movement, was run over and killed by a police patrol truck while walking down the street in Kampala wearing People Power colours. Many believe she was hit on purpose.
“They have done everything possible to try to silence People Power,” David Rukiri, Wine’s political adviser, told Index. He reeled off a long list of classic intimidation tactics – tapping phones, restricting movement, banning public speaking.
Wine, who joined parliament as an independent in 2017, uses his songs as vehicles to criticise the government. For that he has been arrested and had his shows cancelled countless times. Rukiri says that, given how difficult it is to organise a rally now, the group turns up to places that it knows already have gatherings – weddings and funerals, for example – to campaign to end corruption and get out the vote.
“The regime has been really effective at creating apathy among young people,” said Rukiri. “Until Bobi Wine, people – especially young people – were really detached from the political scene. They were made to think that politics was something for other people, not them.
“Bobi, who is young and interested in politics, has tried to show how politics affects them in every aspect of their lives. For example, a lack of jobs is because of the political system. So now lots of young people want to vote in 2021. The electoral commission has registered 2.5 million new voters since 2018. The government is scared of [these] young people.”
The Ugandan government might not be the only ones scared by the potential power of new voters. In the USA, there is mounting evidence of systemic attempts to prevent certain people from voting. Voter turnout has remained low there for several decades – at 58% in the 2016 presidential election, particularly among certain groups. Black voter turnout dropped by 7% in 2016.
“We’re the only advanced democracy that deliberately discourages people from voting,” said former US president Barack Obama in 2018.
Tennessee ranks 49th out of the 50 US states in terms of voter turnout. Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, told Index there had been a marked increase in voter suppression efforts since 2011, when the state imposed a law requiring presentation of photo ID to vote.
“The impact will hit hardest in communities that have been historically disenfranchised and rely on voter registration drives to empower individuals and gain access to the ballot box,” she said.
Laina Reynolds Levy works at VoteRiders, an organisation that helps people to get the required ID. She told Index: “The people who are affected by voter ID laws are disproportionately voters of colour, young people, older voters [who might not drive], and women if they’ve changed their name upon getting married.
““Our fundamental value is that every eligible voter should be able to make their voice heard, and having a restrictive ID law is a barrier to that.”
The organisation’s work might not sound too controversial in a country such as the USA, which prides itself on democracy, but Reynolds Levy says that every so often it is the subject of critical media.
As an organisation that deals with the disenfranchising effects of voter ID, it rubs against those who see this as an essential way to stop voter fraud (a rare occurrence). As a result, in addition to battling rumours and confusion from people about how – and where – to vote, it also encounters disinformation. In February, for example, conservative foundation Judicial Watch issued a press release before the Iowa caucus claiming that eight counties in Iowa had more voters on their registration rolls than were eligible to vote, something that Iowa’s secretary of state dismissed as inaccurate.
Disinformation is one way to stop those aiding voters in their tracks; a lawsuit is another. In Tennessee, the ACLU is currently involved in a lengthy court battle with the secretary of state. The suit seeks an injunction against a law that, if passed, will come into effect on 1 October and will impose criminal and civil penalties on organisations hosting voter registration drives if they return incomplete applications or fail to comply with certain requirements.
Lawsuits – and the threat of them – make freedom of assembly and activism around elections that much harder. They seek to silence the people working hard to ensure everyone has an equal political voice on election day.
A South African woman and her grandson cast her vote in the general election of May 2019. The African National Congress won with 57.5%, the lowest vote share since apartheid ended in 1994
CREDIT: Ben Curtis/Shutterstock
Index spoke to Poland’s OKO.press, an investigative journalism and fact-checking portal, which works with activists across the country who are united in a desire to make Poland’s political system more transparent and fair.
Six thousand people support it financially on a regular basis – but Poland’s current right wing Law and Justice Party, in power since 2016, is not among these supporters.
“We now face a defamation lawsuit brought by a new judge of the Supreme Court, Konrad Wytrykowski,” Piotr Pacewicz, editor-in-chief of OKO, told Index.
“He alleges that we insulted him [by] writing that he took part in a WhatsApp group associated with the justice ministry, whose members are believed to take part in a smear campaign on the internet against individual judges who criticise [the] government’s changes to the judiciary.”
Bolstered by two million unique users each month, OKO continues to work.
“We are resilient in the face of intimidation or threats, not only because of the integrity and courage of our journalists but also because we feel the support of our readers and donors,” said Pacewicz.
But how many others are put off?
Like OKO, South Africa’s My Vote Counts sees the best way to get people to vote is to tackle the lack of information. Sheilan Clarke, the organisation’s communications officer, told Index that in the 2019 general election, South Africa recorded its lowest voter turnout since it became a democracy.
Only 66% of those registered to vote cast their ballots – an 11% decrease from 2014. Almost six million young people under the age of 30 were eligible to vote but didn’t register.
Clarke said: “You can’t simply just go up to someone and tell them: ‘you should go vote because it’s your democratic right’. You will be met with ‘why?’ or ‘politicians don’t care about me’.”
“From a long-term perspective, we believe that a political system that is more transparent and accountable to the people will result in greater participation and inclusiveness, and all of our work is aimed towards this.
“We see great value in providing information that allows the electorate and the public more generally to make political choices from a more informed position, providing the tools to hold our leaders accountable.”
For example, the Political Party Funding Act – which it led calls for – was signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa last year. But it has yet to be implemented because he did not sign the date of implementation, which Clarke thinks could have been intentional.
Despite the setbacks, these organisations are emerging political forces, giving a voice to millions who might otherwise feel left out.
The UK general election in December 2019 saw the emergence of Network.Vote, which wants to get the “unheard third” of voters out to the polls. In Hungary, celebrities supported an awareness campaign that encouraged Roma people to vote in the 2018 general election.
“We just had a very busy beginning of the week. Things are definitely ramping up,” said Reynolds Levy, who is coming up for air after Super Tuesday, when many primaries were held in the election for the Democratic presidential candidate.
As for Bobi Wine and David Rukiri, death threats will not stop them. “We are trying to organise, organise, organise,” said Rukiri. “And of course the environment is very hostile, but we tell people not to give up.”