Voter Suppression Tactics
How deliberate efforts to prevent eligible voters from casting ballots work in practice, from Jim Crow to modern techniques.
Jim Crow and Beyond
Voter suppression has a long history in the United States and worldwide. After Reconstruction, Southern states used literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and white-only primaries to prevent Black citizens from voting. These methods were technically race-neutral but designed and applied to be racially discriminatory. Mississippi's 1890 constitutional convention openly stated its purpose was to eliminate Black voting without violating the 15th Amendment.
Violence and intimidation were the ultimate backstop. The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups murdered and terrorized Black voters and their allies. Even after the Voting Rights Act formally ended legal suppression, intimidation continued in subtler forms: police checkpoints near polling stations in minority neighborhoods, armed 'poll watchers,' and campaigns spreading false information about voting requirements.