How Has the U.S. Prevented Citizens from Voting?

that's what's taught in middle school civics classes. In reality, though, there's another tradition that goes back even further in American history, finding ways to keep people from voting, whether through our cane laws, tricks and hoaxes that prevent eligible voters from going to the polls, or even open intimidation and violence. In some ways, voter suppression, as such efforts are called, goes back to the earliest days of the country. Only six percent of the U s population was eligible to

vote in the first presidential election in see. That's because most states only allowed white male landowners to vote. In the eighteen hundreds, the property requirements started to fade aid, and over the next century, people of color and women legally gained the right to vote, but local and state governments came up with a variety of ways to limit who actually got to participate in elections, and efforts to

restrict voting continue even today. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, Aid, new York based think tank and civil rights advocacy organization. Since alone, twenty five states have passed new laws making it more difficult to vote, such as by reducing the number of polling places and the hours that they're open. One old method of preventing people for voting is to require them to pay a tax for that right, and to make it just high enough to

be prohibitive. In the early twentieth century, most of the former states of the Confederacy imposed such poll taxes. The amounts weren't that high by contemporary standards. Of Virginia charged a dollar fifty per year, which is about eleven dollars in today's money, while Mississippi charged two dollars, about fifteen

dollars today. Even so, the taxes had to be paid in cash, which amounted to a hardship for sharecroppers, miners, and small farmers who generally bought food, clothing, and other necessities with credit and never had more than a few spare dollars in their possession. Additionally, in Virginia and other states, the taxes were cumulative, which meant that a prospective voter had to fork over the cash for several years in

a row before being eligible to register. In nineteen sixty four, the ratification of the twenty fourth Amendment to the U. S Constitution prohibited poll taxes, but it wasn't until two years later that the last four remaining state laws were

struck down in federal court. Although outright poll taxes are now illegal, the issue of needing to spend money to vote intersects with modern tactics of forcing citizens to travel further to access their polling place or requiring voter i D. At least thirty six states now have laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification, such as a driver's license or other government issued I D. Advocates of such laws promote them as necessary to prevent fraud

at the polls, but critics charge that they are intended to keep young people and minorities, whom studies show are less likely to have such I das from voting. In some states, obtaining I D can cost as much as sixty dollars, and even in states where the cards are free, licensing offices are often in places that are difficult for people without cars to reach. In addition to the cost, the types of acceptable identification can be confusing too, or

can favor voters of one party over another. In Texas, for example, a handgun permit is considered acceptable identification, but a University I D Card is not, and it makes

a difference. A September twenty fourteen report by the U S. Government Accountability Office found that black voter turnout in Kansas dropped by three point seven percentage points more than white turnout after a voter ID law was passed, and that the number of eighteen year old voters dropped by seven point one percent more than it did for voters ages forty four to fifty three. In the post reconstruction American South, officials who wanted to keep black people from voting came

up with another cleverly cruel trick. They imposed so called literacy tests, which ostensibly were intended to make sure that only voters who could read and write and thus were adequately informed, could cast ballots. But since formerly enslaved people seldom had been allowed by their owners to learn to read,

the literacy tests effectively disenfranchised many of them. The first such test was created in two in South Carolina, where voters were required to fill out a ballot for each office, such as governor or senator, and then put the ballot in the correct box. The boxes were continuously shuffled to prevent those who had learned to read from helping those

who hadn't yet acquired the skill. As more black people came literate, though, officials came up with even more bizarre tests, such as in Louisiana, confusingly worded instructions that the prospective voter copy out a sentence using alternating cursive print and capitalization. Some Southern states continued to use such tests up until nineteen sixty five, when the Voting Rights Act made them legal. Southern states came up with other tricks to make it

difficult to register to vote. They required frequent re registration, as well as street addresses with names and numbers, which many people living rurally didn't have. In the North and West, in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, officials used similar tactics to keep immigrants from participating in the electoral process too. In California and New Jersey, for example, immigrant citizens were required to present their original naturalization papers

at polling places. Elsewhere, authorities closed polling places and registration offices early so that industrial workers who commonly worked ten hours shifts in those days wouldn't be able to make it in time. And in New York, officials prevented Jewish people from registering by designating Saturdays and Yam Kapoor, during which Jewish religious observances take place, as registration days. An ongoing method of suppression involves pruning names from the voter rolls.

Before the year two thousand presidential election, state officials in Republican controlled Florida hired a private firm to go through the states voter registration roles and delete names of people who were deceased, registered in multiple places, convicted felons, or declared mentally incompetent by court proceedings. But as a subsequent investigation by the U. S Commission on Civil Rights detailed, the hired checkers made numerous mistakes and deleted many voters

who are fully eligible. The commission report doesn't specify how many voters were deprived of their rights unfairly, but the deleted voters disproportionately were African Americans who tend to vote Democrat. In the Miami area, sixty five percent of those deleted were black people, who represented just twenty of the population.

White people made up only sixteen point six percent of the purge list, even though they amounted to seventy seven point six percent of the public, and in a report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that Georgia had removed nearly two hundred thousand names from the voting lists after concluding wrongfully that those people had moved. But the last tactic that we're covering today intersects with a number of other issues in equity and justice, the practice of

banning felons from voting. As many as five point eight million Americans of voting age can't cast a ballot because they live in states that bar anyone with a criminal record from voting even after they've served their sentences. About two point two million of those disenfranchised voters are black, and black people are convicted and sent to prison at twice the rate of the overall US population. In just

two states allowed prisoners to vote. Most of the rest allow them to vote after their sentence, parole time and or probation, or serve. In another eleven states, convicted felons automatically lose their right to vote and may only get it back under certain circumstances, after an appeals process or after any outstanding court fines and fees are paid, which can be a huge hurdle. However, this is one vote

suppressing restriction that's slowly giving way. Over the last two decades, about two dozen states have changed their laws and enabled more people with criminal convictions to regain their rights. Today's episode is based on the article ten ways the US has kept citizens from voting on how stuffworks dot Com, written by Patrick J. Kaiger and Katherine Whitborn. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more

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