Voting rights are the legal and constitutional protections that ensure the right to participate in free, fair, and regular elections for local, state, and national representatives. The proportion of adult citizens who vote in these elections is a critical measure of how democratic a country is.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the first federal law to prevent state and local election laws from disproportionately denying people of color the opportunity to cast their votes. It outlawed literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and whites-only primaries and required jurisdictions to identify racial and geographic areas with a history of discrimination in order to receive preclearance before changing electoral rules. Since the Supreme Court gutted the Act in 2013, dozens of states have passed new laws making it harder for people of color to cast their ballots. The result has been a widening of the racial voting gap, which Congress has the power to stop.
To help voters, Congress has enacted and empowered the Department of Justice to enforce laws protecting the right to vote. This fact sheet is a tool to educate states and jurisdictions about civil provisions of these laws that can be used to protect voters against voter intimidation, harassment, and interference.
States can help voters by passing legislation to make it easier to register to vote and access polling places, including allowing online registration, requiring public schools to help register voters, expanding early voting, restoring the ability to vote on Election Day, and requiring photo identification. They can also discourage those trying to suppress the vote by imposing penalties for frivolous challenges, by shifting the burden of proof in challenge proceedings from the voter to the challenger, and by requiring that election workers report any instances of intimidation.
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