The right to cast your vote is in crisis. This is not new; the electoral process has long been riddled with voter suppression strategies like gerrymandering and other restrictions that flagrantly target underserved communities. But the unprecedented challenges of the 2020 election season have intensified the barriers to the ballot box, from the social distancing necessitated by the mishandled COVID-19 response to the politically motivated attacks on the practice of voting by mail.
In this discussion, we’ll examine both the historical and modern-day efforts to prevent people of color from voting, comparing and contrasting tactics like the literacy tests of the past to the voter roll purges of today. We’ll also reflect on the lessons that election officials learned from primary voting as the pandemic escalated and the ways this could affect equal access to the polls in the upcoming general election. It’s only by providing context for the current obstacles to voting that we can find an equitable way forward.
