[2] Beyond qualifications for suffrage, rules and regulations concerning voting (such as the poll tax) have been contested since the advent of Jim Crow laws and related provisions that indirectly disenfranchised racial minorities.

A historic turning point was the 1964 Supreme Court case Reynolds v. Sims that ruled both houses of all state legislatures had to be based on electoral districts that were approximately equal in population size, under the "one man, one vote" principle.

[3][4][5] The Warren Court's decisions on two previous landmark cases—Baker v. Carr (1962) and Wesberry v. Sanders (1964)—also played a fundamental role in establishing the nationwide "one man, one vote" electoral system.

Justice Hugo Black shared the same sentiment by stating in Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 17 (1964): "No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live.

It said that native tribes would give up their rights to hunt and live on huge parcels of land that they had inhabited in exchange for trade goods, yearly cash annuity payments, and assurances that no further demands would be made on them.

[51] The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), modified in 1975, provided additional help for Alaska Natives who do not speak English, which affects around 14 census areas.

[56] The Delaware Constitution of 1776 stated that "Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat, or entering upon the execution of his office, shall ... also make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.".

[60] With the growth in the number of Baptists in Virginia before the American Revolution, who challenged the established Church of England, the issues of religious freedom became important to rising leaders such as James Madison.

This fact was noted by Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis' dissent in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), as he emphasized that blacks had been considered citizens at the time the Constitution was ratified: Of this there can be no doubt.

In the 1860s, secret vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) used violence and intimidation to keep freedmen in a controlled role and reestablish white supremacy.

The United States Army and Department Of Justice were successfully able to disband the Klan through prosecution and black freedmen registered and voted in high numbers, many of whom were elected to local offices through the 1880s.

The federal government withdrew its troops as a result of a national compromise related to the presidency, officially ending Reconstruction, and soon afterward the Supreme Court would strike down nearly every law passed through reconstruction that protected freedman from racially motivated violence from private actors while also taking a narrow view to the federal government's ability to enforce laws against state actors who perpetrated racially motivated violence.

To prevent such a coalition from forming again and reduce election violence, the Democratic Party, dominant in all southern state legislatures, took action to disfranchise most blacks and many poor whites outright.

From 1890 to 1908, ten of the eleven former Confederate states completed political suppression and exclusion of these groups by ratifying new constitutions or amendments which incorporated provisions to make voter registration more difficult.

It contained requirements for payment of cumulative poll taxes, completion of literacy tests, and increased residency at state, county and precinct levels, effectively disenfranchising tens of thousands of poor whites as well as most blacks.

Booker T. Washington, better known for his public stance of trying to work within societal constraints of the period at Tuskegee University, secretly helped fund and arrange representation for numerous legal challenges to disfranchisement.

From early in the 20th century, the newly established National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took the lead in organizing or supporting legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement.

States developed new restrictions on black voting; Alabama passed a law giving county registrars more authority as to which questions they asked applicants in comprehension or literacy tests.

The rate of African-American registration and voting in Southern states climbed dramatically and quickly, but it has taken years of federal oversight to work out the processes and overcome local resistance.

These lawyers served to advocate for equal rights; over the last century, their legal efforts were focused heavily on addressing the discrimination and oppression of women of color, both stemming from racial and sex bias.

At the culmination of the suffragists' requests and protests, ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote in time to participate in the Presidential election of 1920.

[85] Scholars have written that state-level policies to allow absentee voting for military members were often enacted when a political party in power thought that doing so would improve their reelection rates.

[89] Some notable military members, including William Tecumseh Sherman, George C. Marshall, and David Petraeus, claim that they did not vote in U.S. presidential elections.

Under Article I, Section 8, Clause 17, Congress has the sole authority to exercise "Exclusive Legislature in all cases whatsoever" over the nation's capital and over federal military bases.

[125][126] Ahead of the 2020 elections, citizens from the Virgin Islands and Guam, who had formerly lived in Hawaii, instituted an action, Reeves v. United States, challenging their lack of voting rights.

Various scholars (including a prominent U.S. judge in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit) conclude that the U.S. national-electoral process is not fully democratic due to U.S. government disenfranchisement of U.S. citizens residing in Puerto Rico.

[128][129] As of 2010[update], under Igartúa v. United States, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is judicially considered not to be self-executing, and therefore requires further legislative action to put it into effect domestically.

Judge Kermit Lipez wrote in a concurring opinion, however, that the en banc majority's conclusion that the ICCPR is non-self-executing is ripe for reconsideration in a new en banc proceeding, and that if issues highlighted in a partial dissent by Judge Juan R. Torruella were to be decided in favor of the plaintiffs, United States citizens residing in Puerto Rico would have a viable claim to equal voting rights.

States can require an independent or minor party candidate to collect signatures as high as five percent of the total votes cast in a particular preceding election before the court will intervene.

Opponents say fraud is extremely rare, and ID requirements intentionally create bureaucratic barriers in order to suppress the votes of specific populations, such as poor people or college students.