Voter suppression in the United States

After the American Civil War, all African-American men were granted voting rights, but poll taxes or language tests were used to limit and suppress the ability to register or cast a ballot.

The Post added that "a review of state records, internal e-mails of DBT employees and testimony before the civil rights commission and an elections task force showed no evidence that minorities were specifically targeted.

Elise Shore, a regional attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), agreed the letters appear to violate two federal laws against voter purging within 90 days of the election.

It has been explored whether or not photo ID laws disproportionately affect non-white voters and those of lower income: 8% of White Americans lack driver's licenses, for example, compared to 25% of African-American citizens.

A 2019 paper by University of Bologna and Harvard Business School economists found that voter ID laws had "no negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation.

[37] In Fish v. Kobach, Judge Julie Robinson, who had been appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, noted that the Kansas Documentary Proof of Citizenship law illegally denied 12.4% of new voter registration applications, over 31,000 US citizens, during the period covered by data considered in that case.

In the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections in Florida, fake texts and a YouTube video were sent out claiming to be from 19th district Republican primary candidate Byron Donalds, in which he falsely said he was dropping out.

[46] In the 2024 New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary, robocalls falsely claiming to be from Joe Biden were made urging voters to stay home and "save their vote" for the general election.

[56] During the Reconstruction period of 1865–1877, federal laws provided civil rights protections in the U.S. South for freedmen, the African Americans who had formerly been slaves, and the minority of blacks who had been free before the war.

[58] In 1877, a national Democratic Party compromise to gain Southern support in the presidential election (a corrupt bargain) resulted in the government's withdrawing the last of the federal troops from the South.

Democrats passed laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive, with the result that political participation by most blacks and many poor whites began to decrease.

[64] In some cases, progressive measures ostensibly intended to reduce election fraud, such as the Eight Box Law in South Carolina, acted against black and white voters who were illiterate, as they could not follow the directions.

As a result of the case, the RNC entered a consent decree, which prohibited the party from engaging in anti-fraud initiatives that targeted minorities from conducting mail campaigns to "compile voter challenge lists.

[89][90][91] Shabazz carried a billy club, and was reported to have pointed it at voters and shouted racial slurs,[92] including phrases such as "white devil" and "you're about to be ruled by the black man, cracker".

[107] In December 2010, the Civil Rights Commission released a report concluding that their investigations had uncovered "numerous specific examples of open hostility and opposition" within the Obama DOJ to pursue cases in which whites were victims.

In 2013, the state House passed a bill that requires voters to show a photo ID issued by North Carolina, a passport, or a military identification card to begin in 2016.

[121] In July 2016, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a trial court decision in a number of consolidated actions and struck down the law's photo ID requirement, finding that the new voting provisions targeted African Americans "with almost surgical precision," and that the legislators had acted with clear "discriminatory intent" in enacting strict election rules, shaping the rules based on data they received about African-American registration and voting patterns.

The change led to rebuke and lawsuits from Native American voters on a Turtle Mountain Chippewa reservation, as well as claims of partisanship from then-Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, as the law was championed by Republican state representatives.

[126] While former Attorney General Eric Holder called the rule "nothing more than voter suppression", North Dakota House Majority Leader Republican Al Carlson, who sponsored the law, said "Our attempt was never to disenfranchise anybody.

According to the Times article, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. who was writing on behave of the majority, penned that this move is to encourage states to "clean up their voting rolls" that may contain invalid and/or inaccurate voter registrations.

The commission was led by Kansas attorney general and Republican gubernatorial nominee Kris Kobach, a staunch advocate of strict voter ID laws and a proponent of the Crosscheck system.

"[139] Alabama HB 56, an anti-illegal-immigration bill co-authored by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and passed in 2011, required proof of citizenship to be presented by voters on Election Day.

[149] The suburban and rural outreach efforts by the Doug Jones campaign were successful and he captured the U.S. Senate seat, the first Democrat in 25 years to do so, and in a state that Donald Trump had won by 30 points.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund sent a letter to the county calling for an "immediate investigation" into the incident, which it condemned as, "an unacceptable act of voter intimidation," that "potentially violates several laws.

Barry C. Burden, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of its Elections Research Center said, "An unrealistic rule of this sort will falsely flag many legitimate registration forms.

[160] The lawsuit demanded that the Wisconsin Election Commission respond to a "Movers Report," generated from voter data analysis produced by the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a national, non-partisan partnership funded in 2012 by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

[164] On January 2, 2020, WILL said it asked the circuit court to hold the Elections Commission in contempt, fining it up to $12,000 daily, until it advances Malloy's December 17, 2019 order to purge from the voting rolls hundreds of thousands of registered voters who possibly have moved to a different address.

[172] Harris County, for example, received national media attention because it is larger than the size of Rhode Island and has 2.4 million registered voters but is being served by only one voting drop-box location.

[183][184] Controversy also arose around the actions of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Republican donor to President Donald Trump, who threw out mail-sorting equipment ahead of the 2020 election.

Fifteen states (Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Wyoming) and Puerto Rico have either delayed their primary elections or switched to voting by mail with extended deadlines.