Voter Suppression is Alive & Well in 2024
Voting Rights are Under Attack from All Sides
“The people are the only legitimate fountain of power.”
~ James Madison
Voter suppression has been getting a lot of attention recently, as efforts to suppress the vote have been ramped up since the last presidential election. While voter suppression is certainly an issue in current U.S. politics, it is not new. Examples of voter suppression can be found throughout our history. Even at the dawn of the republic, the right to vote was limited to white, male landowners.
Gaining the right to vote for people of color and women took long, hard struggles. Women were excluded from the polls until only a century ago. Even after black men were granted the right to vote, new barriers were created in the form of literacy tests and poll taxes. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed to protect voting rights and curtail efforts at suppression.
Unfortunately, that was not the end of the story, nor the end of voter suppression. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was damaged by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013. This decision enabled the creation of a whole new set of barriers to voting. Immediately after the decision, several states enacted highly restrictive voter identification laws that work to…
