The 19th Amendment and its legacy: Fights remain for voting inclusivity
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During and after the 2020 election, countless news articles were devoted to the voting impact of women: suburban women, Black women, white women, older women, younger women, college-educated women, high school-educated women and just about every other category in which they could be sliced, diced and otherwise grouped.
And indeed, women did have an outsized effect on the election. Black women helped propel Democrat Joseph R. Biden into the presidency, with about 90% backing the former vice president on his way to reaching an historic high of 81.3 million votes. Majorities of Latina voters and suburban white women with college degrees also backed Biden.
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Fewer rejected ballots seemed to be a win for voter access. Trump and others disagree
Pat Beall, USA TODAY; Catharina Felke, Jackie Hajdenberg, Elizabeth Mulvey, Aseem Shukla and Sarah Gelbard, Columbia Journalism Investigations
In Philadelphia, the feared avalanche of naked ballots arrived well dressed.
Election officials in October worried that up to 40,000 ballots would be rejected in the general election because they had not been put into a secrecy envelope before being mailed in a second envelope. So-called naked ballots are a common mistake that can invalidate votes.
But in Philadelphia County s 2020 general election, the wave of rejections did not happen. High-profile lawsuits, saturation news coverage and a social media campaign featuring nearly nude messages from actors Sarah Silverman and Sacha Baron Cohen in his role as Borat brought naked ballot rejections in Philadelphia County down to a paltry 3,061