Which Of The Southern States Has Fewer Than 400 Registered

Last updated: August 18, 2021

Voting should be as easy and accessible as possible, and in many cases it is. But in recent years, more than 400 anti-voter bills have been introduced in 48 states. These bills erect unnecessary barriers for people to register to vote, vote past mail service, or vote in person. The result is a severely compromised democracy that doesn't reflect the volition of the people. Our commonwealth works all-time when all eligible voters can participate and have their voices heard.

Suppression efforts range from the seemingly unobstructive, like strict voter ID laws and cuts to early voting, to mass purges of voter rolls and systemic disenfranchisement. These measures disproportionately impact people of color, students, the elderly, and people with disabilities. And long before election cycles even begin, legislators redraw district lines that determine the weight of your vote.

Below, we've listed some of the most rampant methods of voter suppression across the country — and the advocacy and litigation efforts aimed at protecting our fundamental correct to vote.

Voter Registration Restrictions

Restricting the terms and requirements of registration is 1 of the most mutual forms of voter suppression. Restrictions can include requiring documents to prove citizenship or identification, onerous obstacles for voter registration drives, or limiting the window of time in which voters can register.

Politicians often use unfounded claims of voter fraud to try to justify registration restrictions. In 2011, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach championed a law requiring Kansans to testify "proof of citizenship" documents in order to register to vote, citing faux claims of noncitizen voting. Almost people don't carry the required documents on paw — like a passport, or a birth document — and as a result, the law blocked the registrations of more than xxx,000 Kansans. The ACLU sued and defeated the police force in 2018. In 2020, the Supreme Court and a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling.

After a surge in registrations during the 2018 midterm election, Tennessee legislators imposed substantial requirements on groups that foster political participation via voter registration efforts and created criminal and civil penalties against those who fail to comply with these onerous requirements and turn in "incomplete" applications. The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law and blocked it from going into effect in 2019.

Resources on voter registration requirements
Look up your state'south voter registration requirements | States with online voter registration

Criminalization of the Election Box

Some states are discouraging voter participation by imposing arbitrary requirements and harsh penalties on voters and poll workers who violate these rules. In Georgia, lawmakers have made it a crime to provide food and water to voters standing in line at the polls — lines that are notoriously long in Georgia, particularly for communities of color. In Texas, people have been arrested and given outrageous sentences for what corporeality at nigh to innocent mistakes fabricated during the voting procedure. ACLU clients Crystal Mason and Hervis Rogers are examples of this egregious handling.

Because of racism in police enforcement and the broader criminal legal system, criminalization of the ballot box disproportionately impacts people of color, who are more than likely to exist penalized. This method of voter suppression aims to instill fear in communities of colour and suppress their voices in the democratic process.

More on criminalization of the ballot box

American Civil Liberties Union

Crystal Mason Idea She Had The Correct to Vote. Texas Sentenced Her to Five Years in Prison house for Trying. | American Civil Liberties Union

The example of a Texas mother is a window into how the myth of voter fraud is existence weaponized to suppress the vote.

Felony Disenfranchisement

A felony conviction can come with drastic consequences, including the loss of your right to vote. Some states ban voting but during incarceration, or while on probation or parole. And other states and jurisdictions, similar Maine, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., don't disenfranchise people with felony convictions at all. The fact that these laws vary so dramatically but adds to the overall confusion that voters face, which is a course of voter suppression in itself.

Due to racial bias in the criminal justice system, felony disenfranchisement laws disproportionately affect Black and Chocolate-brown people, who often face harsher sentences than white people for the aforementioned offenses. Many of these laws are rooted in the Jim Crow era, when legislators tried to cake Black Americans' newly won right to vote by enforcing poll taxes, literacy tests, and other barriers that were virtually impossible to meet. To this solar day, the states with the most farthermost disenfranchisement laws also have long histories of suppressing the rights of Blackness people.

Felony disenfranchisement laws by state

Thirty-six states accept identification requirements at the polls, including vii states with strict photo ID laws.

Voter Purges

Cleaning up voter rolls can be a responsible office of ballot administration considering many people motion, die, or become ineligible to vote for other reasons. But sometimes, states use this procedure as a method of mass disenfranchisement, purging eligible voters from rolls for illegitimate reasons or based on inaccurate data, and often without adequate notice to the voters. A unmarried purge tin end up to hundreds of thousands of people from voting. Often, voters only acquire they've been erroneously purged when they prove up at the polls on Election Day and it'due south too late to correct the error.

Ballot administrators properly keep voter rolls upwardly to appointment by filtering out voters who have changed their address, died, or otherwise get ineligible to vote. But states ofttimes conduct such purges using inaccurate data, flawed processes, and targeting certain voters such as those with felony convictions without enforcing federally-mandated safeguards to prevent purging voters who don't fifty-fifty fall under the targeted group.

The ACLU has taken activity against unlawful voter purges and laws that enable them. In 2019, we stopped Texas' flawed, discriminatory voter purge list that targeted naturalized citizens. This yr, we blocked an Indiana law that would have immune county elections officials to kick voters off the rolls immediately without their explicit consent or observe, or an opportunity to right the record.

More than on voter purges
Written report: Purges: A Growing Threat to the Right to Vote | Congressional Testimony past Sophia Lin Lakin, Deputy Director of the ACLU'due south Voting Rights Projection

Redistricting and Gerrymandering

Every 10 years, states redraw district lines based on population information gathered in the census. Legislators use these commune lines to allocate representation in Congress and state legislatures. When redistricting is conducted properly, district lines are redrawn to reflect population changes and racial diversity. But also often, states use redistricting every bit a political tool to manipulate the effect of elections. That's called gerrymandering — a widespread, undemocratic practice that's stifling the voices of millions of voters.

The Census Agency released data from the 2020 Census in Baronial 2021, triggering this in one case-in-a-decade line drawing process in nigh states. These new district lines will make up one's mind our political voice for the side by side decade.

The 2020 Census

In 2018, the Trump assistants appear plans to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, with the goal of suppressing participation of immigrant communities, stunting their growing political influence. The question would have resulted in an undercount that goes confronting the census' very purpose — to count everybody in this country. Accurate population information is essential in apportioning representation and public funds. The ACLU sued the administration and successfully blocked the citizenship question before the demography was conducted.

The Trump Assistants's Census Cover-up

Photo of US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross

Voter ID Laws

30-vi states take identification requirements at the polls. Vii states accept strict photo ID laws, under which voters must present ane of a express gear up of forms of government-issued photo ID in club to cast a regular ballot — no exceptions. These strict ID laws are part of an ongoing strategy to suppress the vote.

Over 21 million U.S. citizens exercise not have qualifying government-issued photo identification, and these individuals are disproportionately voters of color. That's because ID cards aren't always accessible for everyone. The ID itself tin can be costly, and even when IDs are free, applicants must incur other expenses to obtain the underlying documents that are needed to go an ID. This tin be a significant burden on people in lower-income communities. Further, the travel required to obtain an ID is an obstacle for people with disabilities, the elderly, and people living in rural areas.

Voter ID Restrictions Imposed Since 2010

Map of voter ID restrictions by state — For more than information on each highlighted state, click image for full display.

*Map last updated February 2020.*

Who's Affected By Voter Suppression?

The short answer is all of us. Our commonwealth is debased when the vote is not attainable for all. But the fact is that some groups are unduly affected by voter suppression tactics, including people of color, immature people, the elderly, and people with disabilities. The proof is in the numbers.

Beyond the country, 1 in 16 Black Americans cannot vote due to disenfranchisement laws.
Counties with larger minority populations take fewer polling sites and poll workers per voter.
In 2018, Latinx and Black Americans were twice as probable as whites to be unable to get off work while polls were open.
25 pct of voting-age Black Americans practice not have a government-issued photo ID.
Geographic isolation is a major barrier to Native American voters due to the inaccessibility of nearby polling locations in many reservations. In Southward Dakota, 32 percent of Native voters cite travel distance every bit a cistron in deciding whether to vote.
More than 1-sixth (eighteen percent) of voters with disabilities reported difficulties voting in person in 2020.

Nearly two-thirds of polling places had at least one impediment for people with disabilities.

How To Protect Your Vote

The right to vote is the most fundamental constitutional correct for good reason: democracy cannot exist without the balloter participation of citizens. Nosotros vote because it's we, the people, who are supposed to shape our regime. Non the other fashion effectually.

President Biden and states tin can enact measures to encourage rather than suppress voting. Automated, online, and same-mean solar day voter registration encourage participation and reduce chances of mistake. Early voting helps people with travel or accessibility concerns participate. And states must enforce the protections of the Voting Rights Human activity.

At an individual level, the all-time way to fight voter suppression is to know your rights — and vote.

Tell Congress to pass the VRAA, which would reinstate critical protections against voter suppression left behind after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. This is even more urgent in the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Brnovich five. Democratic National Committee, which significantly undercut the protections of another vital provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Image for Voting Rights Action, a black man standing with "I Voted" sticker on shirt

American Ceremonious Liberties Spousal relationship

Congress: Protect Our Voting Rights | American Civil Liberties Union

We must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to defend our democratic right. The toll of inaction is high.

Know Your Rights before you go to the polling booth. Read and share our guide on what to do if you lot face registration issues, demand disability or language accommodations, or come across someone who's interfering with your correct to vote. Share the guide on Facebook and Twitter to spread the word.

American Civil Liberties Marriage

Know Your Rights | Voting Rights

Larn more than nearly how to practice your voting rights, resist voter intimidation efforts, and access disability-related accommodations and language assistance at the polls. For help at the polls, call the not-partisan Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE.