Facts & Figures

Laws

The Voting Rights Acts of 1965 is a cornerstone piece of civil rights legislation which removed barriers to black enfranchisement throughout the country, banning poll taxes, literacy test, and other measures that effectively prevented African Americans from voting, especially in the South. It was signed into law by President Johnson on August 6, 1965.
The Voting Rights Act also contains special enforcement provisions in Section 5 targeted at those areas of the country where Congress believes the potential for discrimination to be the greatest. One provision requires jurisdictions containing significant language minority populations to provide bilingual ballots and other election material. However, in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula used for Section 5 of the Voting Rights act as unconstitutional, making these provisions unenforceable.

Voter fraud is the illegal behavior of individual voters, such as:
- Duplicate voting: when someone impersonates another voter to vote twice
- Vote selling: when a voter offers to vote a certain way for pay
- A non-citizen voting in an election when they do not have a right to vote
- A felon voting in an election before they have a right to do so
- Voting in a district where the voter does not (or no longer) lives
Extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent, and many instances of the alleged fraud are, in fact, mistakes by voters or administrators.

*FUN FACT* An American is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit election fraud!

Voter suppression is a strategy used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting.
Voter suppression has many forms: strict voter ID laws, no early voting in some states, failure to accept government-issued state university and college student IDs, no disability access, long lines, and the list goes on.
In 2013 the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby v. Holder, that a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was unconstitutional.
Since the Shelby decision at least 13 states have removed eligible voters from the rolls and 16 states called for a photo ID to vote.
11% of U.S. citizens - or more than 21 million Americans do not have government-issued photo identification
The travel required to obtain a government-issued ID is often a major burden on people with disabilities, the elderly, or those in rural areas without access to a car or public transportation.
A recent study found that strict voter ID laws significantly increased the turnout gap between white voters and Latinx, African-American and multiracial voters.
Seventy percent of Georgia voters purged in 2018 were African American

A recent study found that strict voter ID laws significantly increased the turnout gap between white voters and Latinx, African-American and multiracial voters.
Across the country, one in 13 African Americans cannot vote due to criminal disenfranchisement laws, vs. 1 in every 59 non-black voters
5.2 million Americans cannot vote because of a felony conviction
Around 4 million U.S. citizens living in Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico are not allowed to vote for president unless they move to the mainland.