Members of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity created the FAVS 7,000 voting initiative in 2019 to fight against voter suppression. As an important part of the A Voteless People is a Hopeless People program, it is their goal to increase the number of registered voters by 7,000 people at every polling place around the nation. It is named in honor of the struggles of Love and many like him.

“This is a very simple solution to the very complex problem of voter suppression, and all of the different insidious ways that some go about altering elections,” Brother Sedwitz Dumont said. “Whether it’s the elimination of early voting, or the closing of polling places making people wait longer in lines, or people not being able to find their polling place at all, the effect of these measures is to discourage people from voting.

“Alabama is a good example of a state employing these voter suppression techniques. Often not only are they requiring voter ID, but then the places that one would go get a voter ID are frequently closed down. In order for a person of color (or a person who belongs to another disenfranchised group) to obtain that voter ID, long travel times are often required for them to do it. Once the necessary ID documents have been obtained, then some counties may have drastically reduced the number of polling places. You can only imagine the gridlock that it creates and how long the waits have been or are likely to continue to be.”

While the fraternity is a nonpartisan organization, they do support the best interests of Black people, and they fight against racial injustice. Many of the voter suppression practices have been coming from conservative politicians.

“A lot of these voter suppression efforts are focused on African Americans, communities of color, and young people,” Dumont said.

Dumont pointed out that states with Republican governors and majority Republican led legislators are more likely to apply voter suppression methods. Those methods do not stop anybody from voting, but simply make it much more difficult for people to become registered and get to a polling place. The goal of these roadblocks is to discourage enough potentially Democrat, independent or moderate Republican voters from actually voting in order to help more conservative Republicans win elections.

Mail-in voting (also known as absentee ballot) has now become another target for proponents of voter suppression, and many Republican politicians have come out against it. President Donald Trump claims that voter fraud was rampant in the 2016 Presidential election. However, a commission that he formed did not find widespread voter fraud and did not find very many cases at all. Trump is now claiming that mail-in voting will lead to voter fraud, even though many Republicans, including himself, have taken advantage of absentee voting, which is done by mail.

“Every time that there is something easier or simpler, they try to muddy the waters,” Love said.

Another unforeseen hurdle that the FAVS initiative addresses and that will likely be faced by all voters in 2020, is the ability to get to polling places because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the potential for continued sociopolitical protests. Even as states around the nation begin to reopen, the coronavirus will still most likely be an issue in November. Mail-in ballots would allow people to cast their vote while maintaining social distancing.

“As the nation begins to resume business-as-usual, we are seeing increasing levels of COVID-19 infections, and if this continues through to November, I don’t see people being very enthusiastic about being around large groups of people that they don’t know,” Dumont said.

California, Michigan and Wisconsin experienced similar issues in this past election cycle earlier this year. There were complaints that the new electronic ballot boxes dramatically slowed down the in-person voting process. Many polling places reported that the lines to vote were more than two hours long, which discouraged many people from voting. Mail-in voting eliminates that issue entirely.