Voter disenfranchisement has long influenced …

History Matters

For a long time, discriminatory voting rules have affected how people vote and get involved in their communities in the United States. Black people were not allowed to vote for over a hundred years. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended some of these discriminatory rules. But in the last ten years, the U.S. Supreme Court has made decisions that have taken away a lot of voting protections. These decisions have made rules that are unfair to communities of color and make it hard for them to vote. There are still unfair rules in our voting systems, like not letting people vote if they have been in trouble with the law. Rules that make it hard to vote and at large voting practices make it unfair for communities of color compared to white communities.^[21]