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Map: See which states currently restrict voters, which states seek to expand the voting rights. 

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Map: See which states currently restrict voters, which states seek to expand the voting rights. 

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subscribe to The NPR Politics Podcast podcast

Take a glance at the checkered map above, and it's clear that many states have moved in opposite directions in enacting new voting measures this year.

Those changes - which come after the pandemic upended election administration in 2020, a year that witnessed record turnout - have fallen mostly along partisan lines, with Republican-led states like Arizona passing new restrictive voting laws, while Democratic states such as Illinois have increased voters' ballot access.

The classifications on the map are from the Voting Rights Lab, which advocates for expanded voting access. The group determined whether each state's new provisions cumulatively expand or restrict access, or have a mixed outcome for voters.

"What we are witnessing in real time across the country is a widening divide," the lab said in a June report, "whereby some states are working to strengthen and expand participation in our democracy just as a significant number of states work to curtail it."

Dozens of states have enacted more than 200 new laws related to elections and voting, according to the organization.

Following former President Donald Trump's baseless fraud claims and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, GOP-led states that have curtailed ballot access or made changes to election administration - like Arizona, Florida and Georgia - have drawn most of the attention from federal lawmakers, voting advocates and the courts. Texas has just added its name to the list.

But overall the Voting Rights Lab says more states have passed into law measures that expand access.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans have blocked Democratic attempts to pass sweeping federal legislation that would set new election standards nationwide.

Below is a list of the states that the Voting Rights Lab says have passed laws that either mostly restrict or expand access.

Keep in mind: Some places, like Nevada, which will now send ballots to all eligible voters, have enacted significant changes; other state reforms are more modest.

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Map: See Which States Have Restricted Voter Access, And Which States Have Expanded It

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subscribe to The NPR Politics Podcast podcast Take a glance at the checkered map above, and it's clear that many states have moved in opposite directions in enacting new voting measures this year.

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There are so many answers to this question. But most young voters (those around 18 years old) are not aware of its true importance. Allowing one's voice to be heard requires going out and making the effort to use the political power that each citizen holds. Those who fight for voting rights do so, so that people like you and I can exercise our right.

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The League of Women Voters is a group that specifically works to stop voter suppression of primarily women, but also for minorities in the country as well. Read more about the LWV here.

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Why It Matters

Voter suppression is any attempt to prevent or discourage certain Americans from registering to vote or casting their ballot. These measures often target specific groups based on race, ethnicity, political affiliation, age, or other aspects of voters' identities. The most widely used forms of voter suppression include discriminatory voter ID and proof-of-citizenship restrictions, reduced polling place hours in communities of color, the elimination of early voting opportunities, and illegal purges of voters from the rolls.

Historically, voter suppression has overwhelmingly targeted Black Americans. After the Civil War, Black men were able to participate in elections once the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution was adopted in 1870, which states:

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Voter suppression in southern states raged in the form of laws to prevent poor and Black voters from participating in elections. These laws, known as Jim Crow laws, included poll taxes and literacy tests. Many of these voter suppression strategies remained in place until the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act.

In 2013, the US Supreme Court removed key protections of the Voting Rights Act in the decision of . Since then, a surge of anti-voter bills have swept across our nation- with many being legalized.

The League will not stand for this.

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We protect every American's right to vote, challenging those who seek to restrict Black, brown, female, disabled, and other Americans from making their voices heard in our democracy.

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Another great, brief video that sums up much of the ideas in this linked text set: 

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Another great, brief video that sums up much of the ideas in this linked text set: 

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The fight for the right to vote in the United States - Nicki Beaman Griffin

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Joevahn Scott gives a wonderful summary of some of the issues that Black Americans deal with in voting suppression, stretching from long ago to today.

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Fighting Voter Suppression | Joevahn Scott | TEDxSistrunk

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Voter Suppression is Largely a Woman's Issue:

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Voter Suppression is Largely a Woman's Issue:

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See this article, which articulates how the Shelby County v. Holder decision specifically affects women, and their voting rights. The article also discusses how the voter suppression issue is pertinent to trans identifying citizens.

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Why Voter Suppression Is a Woman’s Issue - Supermajority

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The 2020 presidential election is in less than 85 days, and the fight to defeat Donald Trump is inextricable with the fight to combat voter suppression — especially among women. While voter suppression has been an ongoing issue, the situation was made far worse when, in 2013, the Supreme Court struc…

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In 1965, The Voting Rights Act was passed to ensure that local governments do not pass legislation that will prevent certain people from voting based on discriminatory practices. In 2013, this case, Shelby County v. Holder, ruled that a key provision was unconstitutional. Read more here about why that is important.

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Click here for more on the effects of Shelby County v. Holder on the Voting Rights Act >>
The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 to ensure state and local governments do not pass laws or policies that deny American citizens the equal right to vote based on race. On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court swept away a key provision of this landmark civil rights law in Shelby County v. Holder.

In April 2010, Shelby County, Alabama filed suit asking a federal court in Washington, DC to declare Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. Section 5 is a key part of the Voting Rights Act, requiring certain jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to submit any proposed changes in voting procedures to the U.S. Department of Justice or a federal district court in D.C. - before it goes into effect - to ensure the change would not harm minority voters. In September 2011, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and in May 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the district court that Section 5 was constitutional. Shelby County appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court agreed to take the case in November 2012.

On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the coverage formula in Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act - which determines which jurisdictions are covered by Section 5 - is unconstitutional because it is based on an old formula. As a practical matter this means that Section 5 is inoperable until Congress enacts a new coverage formula, which the decision invited Congress to do. The Brennan Center's statement on the decision is available here.

The Brennan Center for Justice, alongside many other partner organizations, submitted amicusbriefs in the case. All the amicus briefs submitted in the case, including the Brennan Center's brief, alongside the Supreme Court documents can be found in our Shelby County v. Holder case documents page

For more information on the precursor case to Shelby County, NAMUDNO v. Holder, click here.

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The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 to ensure state and local governments do not pass laws or policies that deny American citizens the equal right to vote based on race. On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court swept away a key provision of this landmark civil rights law in Shelby County v.

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This NPR article highlights some of the context and background of Reynold's and Kendi's Stamped. It contains an interview of the authors, and gauges their audience and idea behind writing this unconventional and effective book of history.

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After his award-winning bookcame out in 2016, Ibram X. Kendi heard from people everywhere, telling him it opened their eyes to a new way of looking at history.

"They were coming up to me and saying, 'It feels too late now. I wish I had read this in middle school,' " he says.

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, follows five historical figures - like the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and the activist Angela Davis - and offers readers unwashed versions of who they were, and the role that racist ideas played in their lives.

Kendi, an author and historian at American University, says history books in schools today too often don't offer students a deep enough perspective or account of who people were and what they did.

Which led him to take up the challenge of those people who wished they'd learned these lessons in middle school: Give young people access to this history by collaborating with a writer who could take his facts (the history) and write it for a younger audience.

In his mind there was only one person to do it: the children's book author, Jason Reynolds. When he let Reynolds in on this plan, he got a surprising answer: No.

"History is not my thing. I'm a fiction writer!" Reynolds explains. But Kendi persisted, and eventually Reynolds caved. "I realized [Kendi] believed in me more than I believed in myself," he says.

Their new book is called Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, and right from its first few pages the authors promise that, "this is not a history book." Instead, they say, it's a book that mixes past with present - in a way that young adults can relate to.

"History books are written with the idea of a student in mind, but not the idea of an actual young person themselves," says Reynolds. So this book sets out to do just that, and Reynolds says it's filled with "the things that I needed someone to say to me when I was 15 years old."

In a high school in Washington D.C., NPR met with the two authors and a group of high school students who had read the book. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Jason, why were you hesitant to say yes to Kendi's request?

Reynolds: I wasn't sort of a top notch scholar, that I wasn't a part of sort of my story, my journey. And so if a scholar comes to you and asks you to sort of make an adaptation or translation of work that they've poured themselves into, and you don't necessarily see yourself in the same playing field, it can be a little intimidating.
Once you got to yes, then what? How do you write a remix of something that already exists?
Reynolds: History books are written with the idea of a student in mind, but not the idea of an actual young person, just the person themselves. School is for a few hours a day. But, like, there aren't history books written for that kid when school is over, when the bell has rung. And so that's sort of what I'm thinking about this particular book: 'Can I make this something cool?' Because there's currency in cool. There always has been, there always will be. It matters to them. It mattered to me. It still matters to me, right? If it ain't cool I'm probably not gonna rock with it. This is how I am. I'm still that person. So I wanted to try to figure out how to make this really complex thing that has all this information that he gave the world, how do I take it and make it feel like a fresh pair of Jordans.
Before you read this book, what did you know about the history of racist ideas or racism?
Emani James, 10th grade: I go back to like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and Malcolm X, we don't ever learn about what happened before then. Who knew about the first person who was ever racist? Like, I didn't learn about that. And I wouldn't even think it was in the 1400s!

With history, people like to cut off certain parts that they don't want to tell us. Like they're not gonna tell us the deep, deep stuff. You know, like they just gonna tell us the deep stuff.
Do you feel like it's because you're young?
James: I mean it partly is because we're young. But us being young, we still have a great mind.
So, Ibram, did you encounter folks who felt like students were too young to learn this history?
Kendi: There were times in which people would ask, 'are young people ready for this history?' And it was a shocking question because it's so foreign to me that anyone could not recognize how we have so many young, brilliant minds who even, you know, in seventh grade, let alone 10th grade, can understand this history. Not only understand it, but apply it to their own lives. They start to get more clarity about their own lives, they are able to understand their country. And so for me, this getting deep, deep, deep, that really actually protects our young people. So we think we're protecting them by not getting deep. We're actually protecting them by getting deep, by allowing them to really understand this nation's history.
In the book you have three categories that you put people and ideas in. What are those three categories and why use that approach?
Kendi: One of the things we're trying to do with this book is provide people with the vocabulary of how to speak about and understand racism. Know what intimately racism is and how to identify it with language. What we're trying to do is give people the ability to name what they see, what they experience, what they should be resisting.

So there are the segregationists, which Jason calls the haters.

Reynolds: The haters. Segregationists are the haters. Everybody knows what a hater is. All right. Haters. Especially when I was in school. And I know it's no different for y'all. Haters are the people who hate you just cause you ain't like them.

Kendi: And then there's the assimilationist. Who are the likers.

Reynolds: Likers. Your fake friends. I mean, everybody, got 'em, everybody knows them too. Everybody knows the phonies. And they're basically the ones who like you, but they like you because you are like them. You know, that is contingent upon you being like them.

Kendi: And then there's the anti-racists, who are the lovers.

Reynolds: And the lovers. Those are your day ones, as we say. Our 'ride or dies.' The ones who love us for being like us. They love us for who we are, not for who they are, and not for who we are to them, but for who we are to us.
In the book, you apply these definitions to the ideas people have - and often, the same people write about or speak about a combination of the three, meaning people can evolve and change.
Kendi: If people say an assimilationist idea or anti-racist idea or segregationist idea, then you apply it, even if it's somebody who's your hero. I also think we should give people the ability to change. So W.E.B. Du Bois was born in 1868 and he died literally the night before the March on Washington in 1963. That's nine decades. What he was saying, particularly in the 1890s, was more along the lines of assimilationist ideas. But by the time he was in the 1930s and 1940s, he had transformed and was largely articulating anti-racist ideas. This is what we hope for people. We want people to change and we have to give people that ability to change, but also recognize who they were at an earlier time.

Reynolds: I did have friends be like, 'yo, so I don't know, man. What you said about Dr. King kind of hurt! And I'm like, 'first of all, it wasn't me, blame it on Dr. Kendi. Those are my words, but that's all his information.'

I do think it's important that we are honest about even our heroes. It doesn't make them any less heroes, nor does it make their contributions any less powerful. But it does help us sort of get into the nuances of it all. And it does also show how fluid some of that stuff was, and has been, and is, for a lot of us. But that we should always be aiming toward anti-racism.

James: Who is your target market for this? Is it really for everybody?

Reynolds: I never write void of the scope in which I've come. I was a young black person. It is natural for me to speak to young black people. The book is for everybody, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't sort of imagining [Emani's] face. There's certain things that I do want to say to black kids, right? Like that part in Chapter 6 when I write, "Africans aren't savages." Right. That's for us. We're not savages. That was specifically for you.

Amir Perkins, 11th grade: I was surprised there were black people who had racist ideas.

Kendi: Right, you're talking about Leo Africanus. Just like you have black people today who tell white people what they want to hear in order to improve their standing among white people, black people were doing that back in the 1500s! For me, if anyone is saying that there's something wrong with black people, they're saying a racist idea and it doesn't matter their skin color.

Amir: As educated black men, when you're in a certain situation, do you sometimes feel as though white people are intimidated by your status?

Reynolds: The thing about anti-racism that to me that sits at the core of who I am is that I should never have to make myself small for everyone else to feel comfortable about my existence. Right. Why? I earned it like everybody else earns it. And I'm going to be proudly who I am in every space that I am, because I belong everywhere that I choose to go. Self-actualization is at the core of an anti-racist world.

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A History Book That Isn't: Finding A Way To Teach Racism To A New Generation

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Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi team up to investigate the history of racist ideas through a narrative that's aimed at young adult readers. It's called: Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You.

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Linked Text: STAMPED by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

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Linked Text: STAMPED by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

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This award winning book attempts to encapsulate a vast history of the complicated and ugly past of America and its subjugation of African Americans in the United States. In it, the authors highlight the scope of voter suppression against black Americans and their struggle to freely voice their opinions in political office. The book is worth the read to anyone who wants to know more about the history of the United States, beyond just the history of voting.

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Why is important to vote? Why might someone want to supress certain Americans from voting?

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How does voter suppression continue to this day? And how do we as Americans stand up for the right to vote?

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What makes a person "qualified" to vote in the United States? Who should decide?

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Originally, only white, property owning men were allowed the privilege of voting in the U.S.. Around the 1820's, nearly all white men had been afforded the right to vote. Women were forced to fight for their own voice in the political sphere, it was not until an entire century later that they were given their suffrage with the passage of the 19th amendment.

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Women's Rights Movement Begins

The campaign for women's suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War. During the 1820s and '30s, most states had extended the franchise to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had.

At the same time, all sorts of reform groups were proliferating across the United States- temperance leagues, religious movements, moral-reform societies, anti- slavery organizations-and in many of these, women played a prominent role.

Meanwhile, many American women were beginning to chafe against what historians have called the "Cult of True Womanhood": that is, the idea that the only "true" woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family.

Put together, all of these contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen of the United States.

Seneca Falls Convention

In 1848, a group of abolitionist activists-mostly women, but some men-gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the problem of women's rights. They were invited there by the reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.

Most of the delegates to the Seneca Falls Convention agreed: American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," proclaimed the Declaration of Sentiments that the delegates produced, "that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

What this meant, among other things, was that they believed women should have the right to vote.

Civil Rights and Women's Rights During the Civil War

During the 1850s, the women's rights movement gathered steam, but lost momentum when the Civil War began. Almost immediately after the war ended, the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution raised familiar questions of suffrage and citizenship.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, extends the Constitution's protection to all citizens-and defines "citizens" as "male"; the 15th, ratified in 1870, guarantees Black men the right to vote.

Some women's suffrage advocates believed that this was their chance to push lawmakers for truly universal suffrage. As a result, they refused to support the 15th Amendment and even allied with racist Southerners who argued that white women's votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African Americans.

In 1869, a new group called the National Woman Suffrage Association was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. They began to fight for a universal-suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Others argued that it was unfair to endanger Black enfranchisement by tying it to the markedly less popular campaign for female suffrage. This pro-15th-Amendment faction formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association and fought for the franchise on a state-by-state basis.

Gallery: The Progressive Campaign for Suffrage

This animosity eventually faded, and in 1890 the two groups merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the organization's first president.

By then, the suffragists' approach had changed. Instead of arguing that women deserved the same rights and responsibilities as men because women and men were "created equal," the new generation of activists argued that women deserved the vote because they were different from men.

They could make their domesticity into a political virtue, using the franchise to create a purer, more moral "maternal commonwealth."

This argument served many political agendas: Temperance advocates, for instance, wanted women to have the vote because they thought it would mobilize an enormous voting bloc on behalf of their cause, and many middle-class white people were swayed once again by the argument that the enfranchisement of white women would "ensure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained."

Did you know? In 1923, the National Woman's Party proposed an amendment to the Constitution that prohibited all discrimination on the basis of sex. The so-called Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified.

Winning the Vote at Last

Starting in 1910, some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the first time in almost 20 years. Idaho and Utah had given women the right to vote at the end of the 19th century.

Still, southern and eastern states resisted. In 1916, NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt unveiled what she called a "Winning Plan" to get the vote at last: a blitz campaign that mobilized state and local suffrage organizations all over the country, with a special focus on those recalcitrant regions.

Meanwhile, a splinter group called the National Woman's Party founded by Alice Paul focused on more radical, militant tactics-hunger strikes and White House pickets, for instance-aimed at winning dramatic publicity for their cause.

World War I slowed the suffragists' campaign but helped them advance their argument nonetheless: Women's work on behalf of the war effort, activists pointed out, proved that they were just as patriotic and deserving of citizenship as men.

Finally, on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. And on November 2 of that year, more than 8 million women across the United States voted in elections for the first time.

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Women's Suffrage - The U.S. Movement, Leaders & 19th Amendment

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The women's suffrage movement was a decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States. On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

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The year 2020 marked the 150th anniversary of the passage of the 15th amendment, passed in 1870, 91 years after the original Constitution was signed. The amendment was brought forth with the intention of giving African-American men the right to vote for the first time, and the fact that it comes so late shows the systematic prevention by the powers that be to stop certain Americans from representing themselves with their vote.

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U.S. National Archives and Records Administration