Voting and human dignity

The following is a personal reflection by Stephen Niamke, Pax Christi USA’s national field organizer.

I imagine that I was about eight or nine years old the first time my mother took me with her to vote. She did not make speeches about democracy. She did not sit me down for lectures on citizenship. She was always kind of quiet, soft-spoken, definitely not preachy. She simply voted. Every election. Every time.

Periodically, she would take me with her to the polls. Interestingly, it was always just me and her.

As time passed, voting became routine for me. It was not something I had to think about. I paid attention to election cycles, researched candidates, studied issues, and showed up. Voting was not merely political participation in our household; it was a moral responsibility woven into the fabric of daily life. It was and is honoring our ancestors.

After my mother passed away in August 2005, every election became an act of remembrance, respect, an extension of her legacy.

Then came November 4, 2008.

That day I stood in a line unlike any I had ever seen on an election day. Usually voting took minutes. This time the line stretched outside the building and wound through a maze of ropes and stanchions. There was anticipation in the air, but also something deeper — a collective recognition that history was unfolding.

While waiting, I saw an elderly woman walk into the building through the wheelchair accessible entrance. She appeared to be in pain with every step. Two young men, whom I assumed were her grandsons, held her carefully on each side as she struggled forward.

At that moment three things happened inside me. First, I thought about my mother. Second, a tear rolled down my face. Third, I made a decision: I would honor my mother and father by becoming an election official. And if I was given the opportunity, I would do that work for the rest of my life.

By March 2009 I became an election official. Within a year I became a chief election official. Today, I serve as Chair of the Electoral Board in the City of Roanoke.

But honoring my parents through voting and election work did not occur in a vacuum. As I immersed myself in election administration, I began studying the history of voting in the United States. I wanted to understand not only the mechanics of elections, but the struggle behind them.

What I discovered was painful. The history of voting rights in the United States is also the history of organized efforts to suppress the vote. It chronicles a pronounced and calculated history of racism and misogyny. 

Here’s what I learned: The 15th Amendment was ratified on February 3, 1870, declaring that citizens could not be denied the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Yet almost immediately states across the South devised methods to nullify it. Poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, intimidation campaigns, economic retaliation, and outright violence became standard tools of political control.

Mississippi politician Theodore Bilbo once stated, “The best way to keep a n—-r from voting is to visit him the night before.” That was not merely racist rhetoric. It was a blueprint for domestic political terror.

By 1940, in states like Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina, decades of educational deprivation, poverty, and intimidation had reduced Black voter participation to near extinction. In Selma, Alabama — a city with a majority Black population — less than one percent of African Americans were registered to vote.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to confront precisely this reality. It was one of the greatest legislative achievements in US history because it acknowledged a painful truth: left unchecked, systems of power will protect themselves. That is what systems do.

The Voting Rights Act recognized that discrimination was not simply individual prejudice; it was structural, organized, and institutional. Section 5 preclearance required states with histories of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing voting laws. It was an accountability mechanism rooted in historical reality.

And it worked: Between 1982 and 2006, the Department of Justice blocked more than 700 discriminatory voting changes. But history has a way of repeating itself when people declare the struggle over too soon.

In 2013, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that the coverage formula used in Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional. The Court argued that the conditions which justified federal oversight no longer characterized the covered jurisdictions.

Within hours, states began implementing voter restriction laws: Texas enacted strict voter ID requirements. North Carolina moved polling places in predominantly African American communities. Alabama closed DMV offices in majority Black counties after implementing voter ID laws. Wisconsin reduced access in heavily Democratic and minority areas. Georgia aggressively purged voter rolls. Across the nation, polling stations disappeared, early voting periods shrank, and barriers multiplied.

The narrative presented to the public was voter fraud, but the evidence consistently showed voter fraud occurring at microscopic levels — statistically insignificant when compared to the scale of disenfranchisement being created. The real issue was demographic change.

When Barack Obama brought millions of new voters to the polls — African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, young people, and poor people — many political leaders recognized that expanded participation threatened long-standing power arrangements. Suppression efforts accelerated accordingly.

In 2016, African American turnout dropped significantly in key states where new restrictions had been implemented after Shelby County. The public narrative claimed Black voters simply “did not show up.” But the reality was far more complicated.

The 2016 election was the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. Today, the situation has become even more dangerous.

The recent Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais further weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by making it dramatically harder to challenge racially discriminatory district maps. Legal scholars and civil rights advocates warn that the decision may severely limit protections against vote dilution and undermine majority-minority districts across the South. The ruling builds upon earlier decisions like Shelby County v. Holder and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, both of which narrowed federal voting protections.

This is not merely a legal debate. It is a moral question about who counts in a democracy. It is about whether some communities are considered full participants in public life or whether, as Fannie Lou Hamer declared in 1964, they remain second-class citizens struggling to become first-class citizens through the ballot box.

As a community organizer with Pax Christi USA and beyond, I believe this moment requires more than statements of concern. It requires organized moral resistance rooted in Gospel nonviolence.

In 2013, following Shelby County v. Holder, Pax Christi USA issued a powerful statement calling the Court’s decision “deeply saddening and very troubling.” The organization recognized that voter suppression targeted poor, rural, disabled, and minority voters while doing little to address actual voter fraud. Pax Christi USA connected voting rights directly to Catholic Social Teaching and affirmed that civic participation is a fundamental human right.

That witness was important, but the current moment calls for an even deeper response. If voter suppression is systemic, then the response must also be systemic.

From a community organizing perspective, Pax Christi USA is uniquely positioned to help build a nonviolent movement for democratic participation rooted in faith communities, local leadership, and relational organizing.

This means moving beyond occasional statements and toward sustained organizing infrastructure.

• It means educating Catholic communities and peace networks about the history of voter suppression and the ongoing dismantling of voting protections.
• It means organizing transportation to polling stations in underserved communities.
• It means recruiting and training election officials and poll observers committed to fairness and transparency.
• It means partnering with Black churches, immigrant communities, grassroots organizers, disability advocates, labor groups, and young adult organizers.
• It means challenging the false narrative of voter fraud while simultaneously protecting the integrity of elections through truth, transparency, and public accountability.
• It means advocating for restoration of the Voting Rights Act through legislation such as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
• It also means embracing a deeper theological truth: democracy itself is a form of human dignity work.

Voting is not merely transactional politics. It is about belonging. When people are denied meaningful access to the ballot, they are being told that their voices, their experiences, and their communities matter less. That is why voter suppression is ultimately a violence against human dignity. And that is why the response must be grounded in nonviolence, solidarity, courage, and organized love.

I think often about my mother. She never preached to me about democracy. She simply practiced it. Now, as I stand in polling places, oversee elections, and continue organizing for justice, I understand more fully what she was teaching me all along.

Voting is not only a right. It is an act of memory. It is an act of resistance. It is an act of hope. And in times like these, protecting the vote may be one of the clearest ways we can practice love of neighbor and defend the humanity of one another.

The struggle for voting rights is not simply about elections. It is about whether democracy will truly recognize the dignity of every human being. It is about whether communities that have historically been silenced will finally be heard. It is about whether we will continue building what Dr. King called the Beloved Community or retreat into systems designed to preserve privilege and exclusion.

For people of faith, this work is not optional. Scripture reminds us repeatedly that God stands with those pushed to the margins and calls us to create societies rooted in justice, mercy, and truth.

The prophet Micah asks plainly: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

In the gospel of Luke, Jesus reminds us:  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives… and to let the oppressed go free.”

The work of protecting voting rights belongs within that sacred tradition of liberation.

As Pope Leo XIV recently stated: “Far from being a mere procedure, democracy recognizes the dignity of every person and calls each citizen to participate responsibly in the pursuit of the common good. … Democracy remains healthy only when rooted in the moral law and a true vision of the human person.” 

At this moment in history, people of faith are being called not merely to observe democracy, but to defend human dignity through active participation, courageous organizing, and nonviolent resistance to every effort designed to silence the voices of the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed.

My mother taught me that lesson without ever preaching a sermon. She simply voted. Now it is our turn to ensure that future generations can do the same.