Over the last 20 years, states have put barriers in front of the ballot box — imposing strict voter ID laws, cutting voting times, restricting registration, and purging voter rolls. These efforts, which received a boost when the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and have surged since the 2020 election, have kept significant numbers of eligible voters from the polls, hitting all Americans, but placing special burdens on racial minorities, poor people, and young and old voters.
The Brennan Center fights voter suppression on every front. Our lawsuits have blocked or weakened some of the worst suppression schemes, including Texas’s 2013 strict voter ID law and 2021 law prohibiting voter canvassing in the presence of a mail ballot. And our groundbreaking research has helped win the battle for public opinion. We have shown that voter fraud and illegal voting — often cited to justify regressive voting laws— aren’t a systematic and widespread occurrence; racial minorities are much more likely than whites to lack accepted voter ID; and that there is a growing threat of voter roll purges, which risk disenfranchising large numbers of eligible voters.
