Voter Suppression

Websites

What exactly IS Voter Suppression? Many countries make it easier to vote and greatly increase voter participation by making election day a holiday, automatically registering citizens to vote when they reach voting age, allowing same day registration (where you register to vote and vote at the same time). Then there’s the U.S., with one of the lowest percentages of citizens voting in the developed world. And it’s not because people don’t care. It’s because they can’t actually cast their ballots. Learn more with National Voter Corp’s primer on “Vote Suppression.”

The Brennan Center for Justice is a wealth of information on voting rights and voter suppression. They provide a countrywide perspective on voting rights legislation, reforms that both restrict and increase access to the ballot box: Voting Laws Roundup 2021 (be sure to click on the link in the Editor’s Note for the most recent month).

Democracy Docket advocates for voting rights, elections, redistricting and democracy in the courts.  On the same day Georgia Governor Kemp signed the most recent far-reaching voter suppression bill in the states, Democracy Docket filed a lawsuit on behalf of New Georgia Project, Black Voters Matter, and Rise.

Film

Suppressed 2020: The Fight to Vote A powerful documentary, told through deeply personal accounts from voters of color across the state of Georgia, revealing deliberate, widespread voter suppression in the 2018 midterm election where Stacey Abrams fought to become the first Black female governor in the U.S.

Suggested Reading

One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy by Carol Anderson details how voter suppression works, from photo ID requirements to gerrymandering to poll closures. And with vivid characters, the book explores the resistance: the organizing, activism, and court battles to restore the basic right to vote to all Americans.

How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky describes how elected leaders can gradually subvert the democratic process to increase their power. In 2021, The Economist described the book as the "most important book of the Trump era.”