In the U.S. , the right of grownup citizens to vote and elect public officials is one of their most hallowed principle — or at least , that ’s what is learn in middle - school civics year . In reality , though , there ’s another tradition that goes back even further in American chronicle : discover ways to keep people from voting , whether through arcane laws or undefended intimidation .
In some way , voter suppression , as such efforts are called , goes back to the early days of the country . As historian Jill Leporewrote in a 2008 New Yorker clause , only 6 per centum of the U.S. universe was eligible to vote in the first presidential election in 1789 . That ’s because most states only allowed snowy manly landowners to vote .
In the 1800s , the holding requirements started to fade , and over the next hundred , racial minorities and woman lawfully generate the right to vote . But , local and state governments come up with a variety of ways to specify who actually got to enter in elections , whether it was ask poll taxis , literacy exam or changing the dates and times for polling stations .
Efforts to restrict voting keep even today . According to the Brennan Center for Justice , a New York - based think tank and civil rights advocacy organization , since 2010 alone , 25 state have passed new laws spend a penny it more hard to vote .
Here are 10 way that people have been hold on from voting , both in the past tense and the present tense .
10: Poll Taxes
One round-eyed way to keep multitude from voting is to command them to pay a taxation for that right field , and to make it just mellow enough that much of the universe ca n’t afford it . In the early 20th century , most of the former State of the Confederacy imposed such poll taxes . The amounts were n’t that high by contemporary standards — Virginia charged $ 1.50 per year , about $ 11 in today ’s dollars , while Mississippi charge $ 2 ( about $ 15 today ) . Even so , the tax had to be pay in cash , which amounted to a prohibitory hardship for sharecroppers , miner and little farmers , who by and large bought food , clothing and other necessities with credit rating , and never had more than a few redundant dollars in their ownership .
Additionally , in Virginia and other province , the taxes were accumulative , which meant that a prospective voter had to fork over the John Cash for several years in a row before being eligible to record . Other places cut down on involvement by only sending out observation about thetax to property owners , or take voters to show up at the local sheriff ’s spot , which served to intimidate inadequate people and minorities . In 1964 , the confirmation of the twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibited poll taxes , but it was n’t until two years later that the last four remaining State Department police force were chance upon down in federal court [ rootage : DeSilver ] .
9: Literacy Tests
functionary who wanted to keep Black from voting in post - Reconstruction American South came up with another cleverly cruel trick . They imposed so - called literacy test , which apparently were intended to verify that only voters who could take and compose — and thus were adequately informed — could vomit up ballots . Since former slave seldom had been allowed by their owners to see to read , the literacy tests effectively disenfranchised many of them .
The first such test was created in 1882 in South Carolina , where voter were need to meet out a ballot for each bureau , such as governor or senator , and then put the balloting in the correct box . The boxes were incessantly shuffled , to keep those who had learn to read from help those had n’t yet acquired the science [ source : University of Michigan ] .
As more blacks became literate , though , officials came up with even more freaky tests , such as brain - twisters designed to confound the prospective elector . Louisiana , for example , had this head : " drop a line every other intelligence in this first short letter and print every third word in same line ( original type smaller and first transmission line ended at Polygonia comma ) but capitalize the fifth word that you write " [ source : Allium cepa ] . Some southerly states continued to use such mental test up until 1965 , when the Voting Rights Act made them illegal [ source : Ourdocuments.gov ] .
8: Violence
In the post - Civil War South , hush-hush ohmic resistance groups — theKu Klux Klan , the White League and the Knights of the White Camelia — organized to oppose the Reconstruction Period governments imposed by the winning North . They targeted both white and black official for assassination and used violence to intimidate freed blacks from exercising their rightfulness to vote . As historiographer David Blight has explain , the Klan would often take smutty people out of their cabins in the midsection of the nighttime , and whip them or burn role of their body . This was to keep them from exercise their rights , admit the right to vote [ source : PBS ] .
This fury helped the southerly backstage of the Democratic Party , which back then was controlled by steadfast bloodless supremacist , to suppress black voter turnout and wrest control of province and local governments from the Republican Party . Gradually , the segregationists gained control condition of various states , depart with Tennessee in 1869 . By 1877 , another 10 states had switched to the Democrats . As aNational Park Service story notes , watch black voters continued to show up at the polls , but their numbers dwindle away .
In reception , Congress passed legislating making it a Union offence to divest citizen of voting rightfield , and more than 3,000 Klan member were indicted , though only 600 were convicted by Southern juries . But even after the Klan ’s slimy great power was reduced , the new country government plainly enact quantity such as poll taxis to reach the same favouritism [ source : NPS ] .
7: Making It Difficult to Register or Vote
Southern state came up with other tricks to make it difficult to show to vote . They require frequent re - registration as well as street addresses with names and number , which many rural African - Americans did n’t have . Even when a black elector could take on those requirements , they often invented some other technicality to disqualify the elector anyway . A black janitor named Jackson Giles was brave enough to charge a causa challenging such practices in Alabama , but the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his claim in a knotty 1903 decision [ source : University of Michigan ] .
It was n’t just Southern Democrats who wanted to prevent multitude from voting . In the North and West in the late 1800s and former 1900s , functionary sought to keep immigrant who were flood into the U.S. and pagan and religious minority from participate in the electoral process . In California and New Jersey , for model , official made it baffling for immigrants to vote by command them to award their original naturalisation papers at polling places .
In other property , authority used the clock to fan the turnout . They closed polling places and enrollment office early , so that industrial workers who ordinarily worked 10 - time of day shift in those day would n’t be capable to make it in metre . In New York , officials came up with an even more discriminatory policy to prevent participation by Jews , many of whom were socialists . They simply designated Saturdays andYom Kippur , a high holy twenty-four hours , as registration time [ germ : Keyssar ] .
6: Intimidation
In recent years , voting rights advocates have complained that official have sought to dash away some elector , by create them fear that they might be stop and pursue for shammer if they tried to practice their rights and mould ballot .
In 2004 , for example , The New York Times cover that Florida state election officials transmit plainclothes state trooper to the base of at least 40 to 50 older black voter to question them as part of an investigation into supposed election put-on . One charwoman in her 70s later describe in an affidavit how the officers murder their jacket to reveal that they were armed .
'' These guy are using these restrain methods to try out and get these folks to rest by from the polls in the future tense , '' Eugene Poole , president of the Florida Voters League , severalise the Times . '' And you know what ? It ’s do work . " A state functionary tell the Times the troopers had been sent to the voters ' rest home to do the interviews , which produced no evidence of role player , because they think it might be " a more relaxed atmosphere " [ source : Herbert ] .
In 2014 , media outlets reported that elector in Kentucky get an official - looking mailer marked " Election Violation Notice , " which contain the warning : " You are at hazard of acting on deceitful selective information . " The supposed fraud turned out to becampaign promisesof Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes , who was attempting to unseat Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell . Grimes accuse McConnell of trying to scare and bully voters who did n’t empathize that the notice was justcampaign literature . She sued in an exploit to earn an injunction and block it from being diffuse . But a federal judge rejected her request , and Grimes go on to lose the election [ source : Brammer ] .
5: Pruning Names From the Voter Rolls
Before the2000 presidential election , state official in Republican - controlled Florida hired a secret firm to go through the DoS ’s voter adjustment rolls and delete names of multitude who were deceased , read in multiple places , convicted malefactor or declare mentally incompetent in a court proceeding . But as a subsequentinvestigation by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rightsdetailed , the hired draughts made numerous mistakes , and blue-pencil many voters who were full eligible .
The commission news report does n’t specify how many voters were divest of their right below the belt , but the deleted voter disproportionately were African - Americans , who tend to vote Democrat . In the Miami expanse , 65 percent of those cancel were blacks , who represent just 20.4 percentage of the population . Whites only made up 16.6 pct of the " purge list , " even though they amounted to 77.6 percent of the public [ source : USCCR ] .
The commission did n’t line up evidence that officials in Florida conspired to disenfranchise black-market voter [ source : USCCR ] . But many African - Americans did n’t see it that way . " I ’ll never blank out the mass that get up to me and said , ' You permit them steal our vote , ' " U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown , a Democrat , told the Huffington Post in 2015 [ origin : Conroy ] .
Purging voting lists continues . In 2020 , a composition found that Georgia had removed near 200,000 names from the voting lists , " wrongfully close that those people had displace and not changed the address on their voter enrollment , when in fact they never moved,“according to CNN .
4: Voter ID Laws
At least 36 states now have laws requesting or requiring voter to show some form of designation , such as a driver ’s permit or other regime - egress ID , harmonize to the National Conference of State Legislatures [ source : NCSL ] . Advocates of such law advertise them as necessary to prevent fraud at the polls . But critic charge that they ’re intended to keep young hoi polloi and minorities , whom study show are less likely to have such I.D. , from vote . In some states , obtaining ID can cost as much as $ 60 , and even in states where the cards are costless , licensing offices are often in places that are difficult for people without cars to pass [ source : Wilson ] .
The type of acceptable identification can be confusing too , or favor voters of one party over another . In Texas , for example , ahandgun permitis considered satisfactory recognition , but a university ID wag is not [ reservoir : Goodwyn ] .
A September 2014 story by the U.S. Government Accountability Office ( GAO ) found that black elector widening in Kansas flatten by 3.7 percentage point more than clean turnout after a voter ID law was clear , and that the number of 18 - yr - old elector dropped by 7.1 percent more than it did for voters aged 44 to 53 [ source : GAO ] .
3: Reducing the Number and Hours of Polling Places
North Carolina , Ohio , and other states have move in recent years to cutearly voting daysor hours . That ’s a move that the GAO ’s 2014 paper concluded was more likely to inconvenience shameful elector , who tend to favor other voting in person [ sources : Wilson , GAO ] .
Limiting the number ofpolling placesis another tactics . Arizona ’s Maricopa County , the state ’s major population center , offer 400 location in 2008 , but reduced that by one-half in 2012 . In 2016 , the county only supply 60 polling position for voters for the presidential primary coil . As a outcome , voters had to wait in line for as long as five hours in some places [ source : Christie and Van Veltzer ] . For the 2020 election , the county aims to have 175 polling post [ source : Resnik ] .
It ’s unclear just how many voters give up and went home without voting as a result of the logjam . But one critic , U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego , a Democrat , said that it disproportionately touch minorities and the working poor , who have a tough prison term happen transportation [ source : Christie and Van Veltzer ] . The 2020 COVID pandemic exacerbated line of credit in some places as experience elderly poll worker stayed home .
2: Trickery
One try - and - true ploy for bottle up elector turnout is to play a trick on voters into not going to the polls . In 2008 , for example , unnamed tricker in Virginia commit out a phony State Board of Elections flyer to several neighborhoods in the Hampton Roads area , give notice that Republican voters should vote on Nov. 4 but Democrats needed to wait until Nov. 5 — in realism , the day after the election — because of a new design to allay crowding at polling places [ source : Walker ] .
In Maryland , a robocall during the 2010 gubernatorial election told thousands of voters in African - American neighborhood that they could " unbend " and stay home that evening , because Democratic incumbent Gov. Martin O’Malley already had won theelection — even though , in reality , the polls had not closed .
In that lawsuit , Paul Schurick , the campaign manager for O’Malley ’s Republican adversary , former Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. finally was debunk as the culprit . Schurick was tried in 2011 and found guilty of four criminal bearing , include election fraud and failing to let in a notice that the Ehrlich campaign had authorise the calls . O’Malley acquire the election anyway [ reservoir : Broadwater ] . Schurick was sentenced to 30 days of nursing home custody , plus probation and community service [ generator : Davis ] .
1: Banning Felons From Voting
As many as 5.8 million Americans of voting age ca n’t couch a ballot , because they live in states that block up anyone with a reprehensible record from voting , even after they have assist their sentences . About 2.2 million of those disenfranchised voters are African - American , and critics of malefactor disenfranchisement law of nature say that they disproportionately offend smuggled turnout , since blacks are convicted and transport to prison at twice the rate of the overall U.S. universe [ source : Simpson ] .
In 2020 , just two states allow captive to vote . Most of the rest appropriate them to vote after their sentence is served ; after the sentenceandparole timeare serve ; or after conviction , parole and probation are up . In another 11 state , convict malefactor automatically miss their right to vote and may only get it back if the crime was not on slaying or rape ; by appealing to the res publica regulator or some other variable [ source : ProCon ] .
However , this is one vote - inhibit limitation that slow is give way . Over the last two decade , about two dozen states have change their laws and enabled more people with criminal convictions to regain their right [ seed : Simpson ] .
Florida had one of the toughest criminal voting banning in the U.S. Anyone convict was mechanically ban from vote for life , and could n’t be reinstated unless the regulator and the country clemency board accord . As a effect , more than 1.6 million Floridians — about 9 percent of the electorate — were shut out . In 2018 , Florida voters overwhelmingly okay an amendment to the Old Ironsides to restore voting rights to felons who had serve their terms . But a federal charm courtroom ruled that criminal ca n’t vote unless they ’ve paid back all salient court fines and fee , a immense vault since most former inmates are indigent [ source : Mazzei and Wines ] .
Lots More Information
This was an interesting assignment for me , because back in the 1990s , I covered political science , and wrote a couple of feature stories for George , the magazine redact by John F. Kennedy Jr.
