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For decades before the civil rights movement, voter suppression was enforced through intimidation and violence – poll taxes, literacy tests, and mobs at the polls.
Today, those same goals are being pursued through what experts call bureaucratic violence – using laws, regulations, and administrative roadblocks to achieve the same ends under a new name. It’s a more subtle, paper-pushing form of disenfranchisement.
Same Strategy, New Packaging
The old Jim Crow laws may sound like relics of the past, but their DNA runs straight through today’s restrictions. The tactics have simply been repackaged to look technical, neutral, or bureaucratic – while targeting the same communities.
Exact match laws: A missing hyphen, apostrophe, or middle initial can get your registration tossed. In 2018, then–Secretary of State Brian Kemp blocked 53,000 voter registration applications under Georgia’s exact match rule – nearly 70% belonged to Black voters.
Poll taxes → SAVE Act: Poll taxes once made people pay to vote. Now, proposals like the SAVE Act demand proof of citizenship with specific, often expensive, government documents that tens of millions of eligible voters don’t have on hand. Getting them can cost hundreds of dollars and require hours of travel. Just like poll taxes, it’s a price tag on your right to vote, dressed up as paperwork.
Violence → Election “Security” or “Integrity”: In 1981, the Republican National Committee sent off-duty police with armbands labeled Ballot Security Task Force to patrol polling sites in New Jersey. They settled a lawsuit around the episode and entered into a consent decree that barred this practice through 2017. Since then, we’ve seen false claims that led to death threats against poll workers in Georgia, mobs surrounding Detroit’s vote count, men armed with rifles outside election offices in Arizona. Far-right groups like True the Vote boast about recruiting Navy SEALs to watch voting locations for “fraud.”
The Courts Opened the Door
For decades, these new voter suppression attempts were overturned or blocked before taking effect by the Voting Rights Act. But after the Supreme Court’s rulings that dismantled key protections in the law, states are now able to recycle Jim Crow-era tactics under modern legal cover.
Shelby County v. Holder (2013): Gutted the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance rule, which had blocked discriminatory laws before they went into effect.
Brnovich v. DNC (2021): Made it harder to strike down laws that disproportionately impact voters of color.
Together, these rulings gave states a green light to bring back old tactics in new forms.
It’s Not About Fraud – It’s About Power
If these laws were really about preventing fraud, they wouldn’t target the same groups over and over again – especially after the myths of fraud are disproven over and over again. But just like in the Jim Crow era, modern voter suppression is about defining who counts and sidelining those who threaten the status quo.
Targeted communities: Black voters, Latinos, Native Americans, young people, and low-income citizens.
State examples:
Texas’s SB 7 used the Jim Crow phrase “purity of the ballot box” in its initial text.
Georgia’s SB 202 was signed into law by Governor Brian Kemp under a painting of a slave plantation, a scene as symbolic as the bill itself. And Kemp made the reason for SB 202 explicitly clear during a Republican primary debate when he ran for reelection in 2022, saying he was "frustrated" that Democrats won in 2020. Data shows the law has a disproportionate impact on Black voters.
North Carolina’s 2013 voter suppression law (passed two months after Shelby County v. Holder) was struck down for targeting Black voters “with almost surgical precision.”
Because when those voters turn out, power shifts. The suppression strategy extends beyond legislation – here are a few examples:
Gerrymandering: In Alabama, Trump’s Department of Justice has opposed restoring preclearance – even while evidence shows state maps have repeatedly diluted Black voting power.
Polling-site closures: An ABC News report from late 2024 revealed how Georgia closed polling locations in predominantly Black neighborhoods, pushing voters farther and into longer lines.
Voter purges: Fair Fight’s analysis of Georgia’s 2025 voter purge (which could remove almost 500,000 voters from the rolls) shows that, after filtering out those who likely moved, Black voters account for 39% of “returned mail” flags and 44% of “no contact” flags – well above their share of the electorate.
The Fight Continues
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. It once was a shield for Americans’ freedom, but now that it’s been weakened by the courts, the old playbook is rushing back in.
If we want a democracy that works for all of us, we can’t just spot the tactics. We have to stop them – and write a new playbook of our own.
Call your U.S. senators – tell them to vote YES on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and NO on the SAVE Act: (202) 224-3121.
Fair Fight Team
Paid for by Fair Fight, www.fairfight.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
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