Image: Voters standing in line for hours in Texas after hundreds of polling locations were closed, mostly in Black and Brown communities.

HELP FIGHT VOTER SUPPRESSION

• Find everything you need to know about registering to vote, how to vote by mail, and where your polling location is at Vote.org.
• Help young people get involved by sharing and supporting the work of NextGen America.
• If you encounter any problems voting, call Election Protection: 866-OUR-VOTE.
• Donate to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which is paying off the fines of previously incarcerated Floridians so that they can regain their right to vote.
• Join Swing Left to help win strategic legislative seats that will prevent future gerrymandering.
• Send personalized postcards to strategically targeted voters through Postcards to Voters.
• Volunteer at a polling place to decrease the potential for long lines.
• Check out these organizations to find the best fit for you: Seed the Vote, Common Cause, Reclaim Our Vote, Mi Familia Vota, Black Voters Matter, Field Team 6, Red2Blue, Vote Forward, and Fair Fight.
• Check out the Race-Class Academy for effective messaging on building a broad-based coalition of working-class and racial justice interests.
• To stay up to date on voter suppression news, follow Ari Berman and Carol Anderson.
• For further information, see this resource page from voting rights expert Gilda R. Daniels.

DOCUMENTARIES

Stacey Abrams: All In: The Fight For Democracy.

BOOKS

Stacey Abrams, Carol Anderson, Kevin Kruse, Heather Cox Richardson, and Heather Ann Thompson: Voter Suppression in U.S. Elections.

Carol Anderson. One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy.

Ari Berman. Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.  

Mary Frances Berry: Five Dollars and a Pork Chop Sandwich: Vote Buying and the Corruption of Democracy.

Charles S. Bullock III, Ronald Keith Gaddle, & Justin J. Wert. The Rise and Fall of the Voting Rights Act.

Gilda R. Daniels: Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America.

Karlyn Forner. Why the Vote Wasn’t Enough for Selma.

Bernard L. Fraga. The Turnout Gap: Race, Ethnicity, and Political Inequality in a Diversifying America.

Vanessa A. Holloway: In Search of Federal Enforcement: The Moral Authority of the Fifteenth Amendment and the Integrity of the Black Ballot, 1870–1965.

Robert R. Korstad & James L. Leloudis: Fragile Democracy: The Struggle over Race and Voting Rights in North Carolina.

Robert E. Mutch. Buying the Vote: A History of Campaign Finance Reform.

William Poundstone. Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren’t Fair (and What We Can Do About It.)

Jesse H. Rhodes. Ballot Blocked: The Political Erosion of the Voting Rights Act.

Michael Waldman. The Fight to Vote.  

Tova Wang. The Politics of Voter Suppression: Defending and Expanding Americans’ Right to Vote.

ARTICLES

Carol Anderson writes prolifically about voter suppression: you can find her many articles here.

Emily Bazelon: The New Front in the Gerrymandering Wars: Democracy vs. Math. Sophisticated computer modeling has taken district manipulation to new extremes. To fix this, courts might have to learn how to run the numbers themselves.

Angela Behrens and Christopher Uggen:  Ballot Manipulation and the “Menace of Negro Domination”: Racial Threat and Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States, 1850–2002.

Ari Berman writes prolifically about voter suppression: you can find his many articles here and here.

Daniel Crown: Voter suppression is ingrained in our national DNA: Americans have been trying to keep their opponents from voting for three centuries.

Katharine Gerbner: Most people think ‘whiteness’ is innate. They’re wrong: It was created to keep black people from voting. When slaves got close to voting rights, slaveowners changed the rules of the game.

Christian Hosam: The Supreme Court’s long war against voting rights: The problem isn’t just state legislatures.

Peniel E. Joseph: In 2020, voting rights are on the ballot:  Undermining the Voting Rights Act and eroding voting access is rooted in white supremacy.

Jamila Michener: How Trump’s Medicaid Restrictions Will Stop People From Voting.    

Elias Rodriques: Still a Long Time Coming: Selma and the unfulfilled promise of civil rights.

Brent Staples: The Racist Origins of Felon Disenfranchisement.    

Ian Toller-Clark: The courts are unlikely to have the last word on gerrymandering: Politicians will find a way to manipulate whatever criteria the courts set.

Stephen Wolf: New data from November election shows Mississippi’s Jim Crow constitution still harms black voters.

For more resources on systemic racism, visit the systemic racism section of the website.