Over the last 20 years, states have erected barriers to the ballot box by imposing strict voter ID laws, cutting early voting times, restricting registration, and purging voter rolls too aggressively. These efforts received a boost when the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act in 2013, and they’ve surged since the 2020 election. Such antidemocratic measures have kept significant numbers of eligible voters from the polls, especially among 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 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 widespread. Our studies have also found that racial minorities are much more likely than whites to lack accepted voter ID.
