UCLA

Rampant voter suppression post Shelby County v. Holder has targeted Black southern voter participation. Despite these deterrents, Black voter turnout remains consistently high. I posit that this paradox can be explained by the countermobilizing efforts of Black socio-cultural institutions (the Black church and Black civic and community organizations) serving as cost reducing mechanisms for Black voters. I argue that while voter suppression increases the cost of voting, these institutions reduce the cost of voting by increasing voters’ willingness to commit Counteractive Political Activities - activities that directly counteract the barriers placed by voter suppression. I posit that these non-traditional and rarely measured activities are critical to bolstering political participation among Black voters in environments where voting is not a straightforward or easy task.

To investigate this, I ask three research questions: 1) To what extent does involvement in socio-cultural institutions influence voters’ willingness to overcome voter suppression? 2) What factors influence the effectiveness of Black socio-cultural institutions in mobilizing Black voters against suppressive electoral policies? 3) To what extent do Black socio-culturalinstitutions influence Black voter turnout in jurisdictions implementing suppressive electoral policies, ceteris paribus? I answer these questions with a mixed methods approach, utilizing original survey data of Black and white respondents nationally, original survey data of Black religious voters, in-depth interviews with leaders of a prominent mobilizing institution, and election data from the 2022 midterm election. Using the state of Texas as a case study, I show that engagement in socio-cultural institutions works to reverse the negative effects of being low-income and less formally educated on political participation for African Americans. I show that among Black religious voters, when an individual’s church works to ease the logistical burden of voting, that individual increases in willingness to overcome voter suppression. I uncover the strategies of one of Texas’ prominent political churches qualitatively and quantitatively and show that their mobilizing strategy is made effective by partnering material resource provision with racial and spiritual appeals toward civic participation. The findings of this dissertation extend our understanding of Black political participation and the critical role that Black institutions play in countering the effects of voter suppression.