Voter Suppression

Voter suppression - After the Fifteenth Amendment barring racial discrimination in voting was adopted in 1870, Southern states and others continued to disenfranchise Black voters through poll taxes, literacy tests, and violent intimidation, killing many Black people who tried to vote. Laws today, such as changes to the 1965 Voting Rights Act made in 2013 and felony disenfranchisement, continue to present obstacles to voting in Black communities. Prosecution and barriers to voting based on concerns about voter fraud that lack data to support them are also forms of voter suppression.  See EJI’s article about how Voter Suppression Persists Through Purging for more information. 

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