Voter suppression in the United States

Voter suppression refers to practices designed to interfere in election outcomes by dissuading or preventing specific populations of voting-age adults from voting. Historically, voter suppression has often attempted to reduce or eliminate the number of voters that intend to vote against a candidate or political measure that the suppressor hopes will succeed. Voter suppression tactics range from small inconveniences such as making the act of voting difficult to a specific voting group to actual acts of aggression against the targeted voting population. Voter suppression efforts have varied over time and are often specific to various state and local governments. Most of these tactics are illegal, but many nonviolent tactics remain legal in the United States.

Throughout American history, voter suppression has effectively influenced the outcomes of many elections. Civil rights activists began acknowledging problems with voting rights in the mid-twentieth century. Protests and marches eventually caught the attention of the public and soon efforts to stamp out voter suppression schemes were underway. The enactment of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 made many voter suppression strategies illegal, but voter suppression persisted into the twenty-first century. Voter suppression entered the spotlight again in the early 2010s after the US Supreme Court struck down a key section of the VRA that required preclearance of any changes made to voting laws in regions with a history of voter discrimination. Critics of the change argued that the decision enabled state officials to make it harder for marginalized populations to vote. By the early 2020s, civil rights advocates argued that the ruling had allowed for an increase in voter suppression as more voting requirement laws had been established in some states that affected people of color disproportionately, which they believe was highly demonstrated in the 2018 midterm elections and 2020 general election. Such measures included voter roll purges, closures of polling locations, and redrawings of districts for elections.

Background

When the United States was founded in the late eighteenth century, the original US Constitution left it up to the states to determine who they deemed citizens with the right to vote. During these early years, voting was primarily limited to White men who owned property. This stipulation persisted for several generations before voting rights were expanded to racially marginalized groups with the passage of new constitutional amendments in the late nineteenth century, including the Fifteenth Amendment that prohibited the federal and state governments from denying a citizen from voting due to race or skin color. Although Black men were granted the right to vote as US citizens with the passage of this amendment, a number of states implemented discriminatory obstacles in an attempt to stifle the Black American vote.

Reactionary laws known as Jim Crow Laws were passed throughout a number of Southern states. Under these laws, Black Americans were subjected to a number of practices that impeded their civil rights, including their ability to vote. In 1896, Louisiana passed what became known as "grandfather clause" laws that were designed to prevent the formerly enslaved and their descendants from voting. As a result, Black voter numbers dropped from more than 44 percent in 1896 to a mere 4 percent four years later. Alabama, Virginia, Mississippi, and South Carolina instituted similar clauses in their state laws.

Other measures designed to hinder Black voting included having to fill out voter forms, taking a good-character test, and completing a literacy test before being allowed to vote. In some Southern states, Black voters were also made to recite the US Constitution before they were allowed to vote. Given the low literacy rates among uneducated Black Americans at the time, these tests made it almost impossible for most Black Americans to cast ballots. Other states also implemented poll taxes on Black communities. These taxes were a financial burden to Black people experiencing poverty, and if they did not pay the tax, then they could not vote. A number of Southern political officials openly admitted that such tactics were enforced in the hopes of eliminating Black voters from the election cycle. Some Southern precincts even held "Whites only" primaries both as a way to keep Black votes and Black candidates out of the primary selection process and as a form of protest against federal voting laws.

In some states, White supremacist groups took violent measures to prevent Black people from voting. The Ku Klux Klan were well known for using violence to intimidate Black people into staying away from the polls. One voter suppression tactic involved dropping flyers into Black neighborhoods warning Black Americans to exercise caution at the polls or face the consequences. The KKK was also known to stand outside predominately Black polling places and intimidate Black voters, at times threatening and overtly attacking those who came out to vote. Other tactics included threatening Black candidates and forcing Black leaders out of office. Jim Crow and violence against Black voters overshadowed Southern Black voting efforts throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, drastically decreasing the Black voter presence in these regions during the years it was lawful. Intimidation and suppression tactics showed persistent success into the mid-twentieth century.

While Black Americans struggled to overcome the suppression of Jim Crow, female rights suffragists were struggling to earn women the right to vote. Women across the country led marches and demonstrations demanding equal voting rights for women. Women earned the right to vote with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, but they also experienced voter suppression tactics in the aftermath. More reactionary laws were implemented in response to the new amendment, making it impossible for many women experiencing poverty and women of color to exercise their voting rights.

By 1940, only 3 percent of eligible Black Americans in the South were registered to vote. Eventually, the exclusionary voting laws of the South were challenged by the Supreme Court. In 1944, the Supreme Court reaffirmed Black American voting rights in the case Smith v. Allwright, which outlawed White-only primaries. Such legal affirmations did not deter political violence, however. A number of prominent voting-rights advocates received threats for their role in promoting Black political independence. Some of these activists lost their lives in the process.

By the 1960s, the civil rights movement had taken hold in the United States. Black Americans across the country staged protests and marches demanding equal rights for all Americans. In terms of Black voting rights, civil rights activists took to the streets to disperse grassroots voter-registration campaigns and fight for Black representation in politics. Activists also sought an end to egregious voting restrictions such as literacy tests and other unjust qualifiers. In time, these efforts earned the support of prominent Americans, including President John F. Kennedy, who proposed a bill abolishing voter discrimination based on race. Although Kennedy was assassinated before he was able to see the bill through, his administration did help the passage of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibited poll taxes and was ratified in 1964. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, prioritized the adoption of a broader range of civil rights measures, and the Voting Rights Act was passed and signed into law in 1965.

Overview

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided several protections to American voters. The act permanently banned barriers that were directly aimed at racially and ethnically marginalized groups. It barred election practices designed to restrict a person's right to vote on account of race. The act also required jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting to receive federal approval before any changes were made to their election laws. By the end of 1965, more than 250,000 Black Americans had registered to vote. Later amendments to the VRA added provisions such as the creation of majority-minority voting districts to prevent voter dilution through gerrymandering.

Despite this legal victory for voting rights, voter suppression remained a problem in other aspects of society over the next several decades. Several states continued to disenfranchise those convicted of a felony, which denied voting rights to millions of incarcerated Americans. Although some states restored voting rights after a prisoner completed their sentence, some states permanently disenfranchised people who had been convicted of a felony. Such voter suppression disproportionately affected Black Americans and Latinos.

Other factors that have contributed to voter suppression have included underfunded election areas, voter disinformation, gerrymandering, voter roll purges, and early and absentee ballot limitations. In terms of voter roll purges, investigative journalists have found that several states engage in anti-voter fraud practices that deny voting rights to citizens as a result of computer algorithmic errors. Some critics have accused these practices of being discriminatory. One analysis found that the database of an anti-voter-fraud program known as Crosscheck consisted primarily of common Black American and Latino last names.

Another way voting rights have been diminished is through the institution of voter ID laws. A number of Republican lawmakers in several states have pushed for the enactment of voter ID laws that require people to show a valid form of government-issued identification before they are allowed to vote. This is another measure aimed at reducing purported voter fraud (which experts have agreed is extremely rare). Obtaining a government-issued ID is difficult for some people, however, as it requires traveling to state agencies and obtaining valid birth certificates. Individuals are often forced to take time off work to visit these agencies, while many are simply unable to do so. Some voter ID laws have been overturned by state and federal courts, but various states continued to impose voting restrictions despite studies suggesting that these measures primarily harm persons of color.

A notable action affecting the voting rights of marginalized groups was the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court case. The decision ended nearly fifty years of federal oversight over the voting laws of regions with a history of voter suppression. As a result, by late 2019 civil rights groups noted that almost 1,200 polling places in the Southern states had been closed since the court ruling. Meanwhile, in 2018 a federal court overturned a ban on Republican anti-voter fraud operations that had been determined to involve voter intimidation or exclusion of minorities on multiple occasions beginning in the early 1980s. Watchdog groups subsequently noted considerable growth in Republican poll watching efforts, voter ID campaigns, and other initiatives that drew criticism from many voting rights advocates but were touted as necessary by many conservatives.

In 2020, as the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused social and economic disruption, many observers raised fears that the disease could draw attention away from or exacerbate voter suppression efforts. While many US jurisdictions postponed primary elections that spring, a few kept to schedule but faced major obstacles. For example, in Wisconsin—seen as a key swing state—many polling stations were abruptly closed in the city of Milwaukee, home to a significant Black population. Many voters expressed health concerns about visiting crowded polling stations, leading to calls for an expansion of mail-in voting capability around the country. Such plans were strongly opposed by many Republicans, notably including President Donald Trump, who claimed, without evidence, that mail-in voting would lead to widespread voter fraud; this opposition and misinformation was criticized by many as a veiled form of voter suppression.

The highly partisan state of US politics continued to factor heavily in debates over voter suppression surrounding the 2020 presidential election. Both during and after the election, some advocates and commentators argued that the Republican Party had made efforts to suppress Democratic votes through efforts such as launching legal challenges to expansions of mail ballots in certain states, calling for stricter matching of signatures on ballots in some areas, and setting limitations on available sites for dropping off mailed ballots (in Texas, only one site was accessible per county, with more populated counties tending to be more Democratic). Others saw attempts to discredit the counting system and early and mail-in voting in Philadelphia as a means of suppression through intimidation, particularly as the city has traditionally been populated by communities of color and been a Democratic stronghold. After Trump lost the election to Joe Biden, Trump and his supporters escalated their baseless claims of widespread voter fraud—largely aimed at cities with large Black populations—and sought to overturn the results in several swing states. Trump supporters even violently stormed the US Capitol in January 2021 in an effort to invalidate Biden's victory. Voting rights advocates criticized Republican messaging as implying that some votes, mainly those of people of color, should not count.

Voter suppression remained a significant issue in the wake of the 2020 election. In March 2021 the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill that aimed to expand voter access through easier registration processes and other policies, but it was ultimately blocked by Senate Republicans. Later in March, Georgia passed a law imposing various restrictions on voting rights, including limits on ballot drop-off sites, strict voter identification rules, state legislature authority to overrule local election officials, and criminal penalties for non–poll workers giving water or food to voters waiting in line. Many commentators condemned the law as voter suppression, and several voting rights groups as well as the US Department of Justice quickly sued Georgia. Despite the outcry against the Georgia law, Florida Republicans passed a similar bill in May 2021. Voting rights activists also expressed concern when, in July, the Supreme Court upheld two restrictive laws that had been passed in Arizona. Though the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, aimed at bolstering the Voting Rights Act of 1965, was introduced and passed in the House in August, by the end of the year this bill had also been blocked in the Senate. While a combination of the two bills passed the House in January, the Senate voted to block the legislation's consideration shortly after. Meanwhile, the Brennan Center for Justice reported that between January 1 and September 27, 2021, at least nineteen states had legislatively restricted voting access through the enactment of thirty-three laws, and forty-nine states had introduced over 425 bills containing provisions restricting voting access during legislative sessions that year. By May 2022, the Brennan Center reported that more than 148 election interference bills (defined by the Brennan Center as laws that would either allow for partisan interference or threaten voters and the election process itself) had been proposed throughout twenty-seven states.

Following the 2020 US Census and during the 2024 election cycle, the voter-suppression issue of gerrymandering also came to the fore once again as district maps were redrawn according to the new population data. While some legal battles over these maps, such as in Alabama and Louisiana, at least temporarily ended with Supreme Court decisions upholding the VRA, others in states such as South Carolina resulted in rulings that activists argued enabled unconstitutional racially discriminatory vote dilution. By 2024, amid claims that increased attempts at purging voter rolls were occurring in several states, the Brennan Center reported that at least thirty states had enacted over seventy restrictive voting laws; Georgia's laws remained particularly contentious.

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