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A History of the Voting Rights Act from ACLU

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A History of the Voting Rights Act from ACLU

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An interactive timeline

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The Voting Rights Act is a historic civil rights law that is meant to ensure that the right to vote is not denied on account of race or color.This will be the first election in 50 years without full protection of the right to vote for minority voters.

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Civil Rights History Project Collection

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Voting Rights | Articles and Essays | Civil Rights History Project | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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When Reconstruction ended in 1877, states across the South implemented new laws to restrict the voting rights of African Americans. These included onerous requirements of owning property, paying poll taxes, and passing literacy or civics exams. Many African Americans who attempted to vote were also threatened physically or feared losing their jobs. One of the major goals of the Civil Rights Movement was to register voters across the South in order for African Americans to gain political power. Most of the interviewees in the Civil Rights History Project were involved in voter registration drives, driving voters to the polls, teaching literacy classes for the purposes of voter registration, or encouraging local African Americans to run as candidates.

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from KQED

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The Fight to Vote: America’s Turbulent Voting Rights History [Interactive Timeline] | KQED

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The United States prides itself as a beacon of democracy on the world stage. But universal suffrage has been elusive throughout its history. Teach with the Lowdown Nonfiction analysis, writing/discussion prompts and multimedia projects. Browse our entire lesson plan collection here. Voting rights history lesson plan (PDF) From the early years of the republic, when voting

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Department of Justice

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The Voting Rights Act of 1965

The 1965 Enactment

By 1965 concerted efforts to break the grip of state disfranchisement had been under way for some time, but had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved almost entirely ineffectual. The murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism. Finally, the unprovoked attack on March 7, 1965, by state troopers on peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, en route to the state capitol in Montgomery, persuaded the President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance to effective voting rights legislation. President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings began soon thereafter on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act.

Congress determined that the existing federal anti-discrimination laws were not sufficient to overcome the resistance by state officials to enforcement of the 15th Amendment. The legislative hearings showed that the Department of Justice's efforts to eliminate discriminatory election practices by litigation on a case-by-case basis had been unsuccessful in opening up the registration process; as soon as one discriminatory practice or procedure was proven to be unconstitutional and enjoined, a new one would be substituted in its place and litigation would have to commence anew.

President Johnson signed the resulting legislation into law on August 6, 1965. Section 2 of the Act, which closely followed the language of the 15th amendment, applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the literacy tests on a nationwide basis. Among its other provisions, the Act contained special enforcement provisions targeted at those areas of the country where Congress believed the potential for discrimination to be the greatest. Under Section 5, jurisdictions covered by these special provisions could not implement any change affecting voting until the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia determined that the change did not have a discriminatory purpose and would not have a discriminatory effect. In addition, the Attorney General could designate a county covered by these special provisions for the appointment of a federal examiner to review the qualifications of persons who wanted to register to vote. Further, in those counties where a federal examiner was serving, the Attorney General could request that federal observers monitor activities within the county's polling place.

The Voting Rights Act had not included a provision prohibiting poll taxes, but had directed the Attorney General to challenge its use. In Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), the Supreme Court held Virginia's poll tax to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. Between 1965 and 1969 the Supreme Court also issued several key decisions upholding the constitutionality of Section 5 and affirming the broad range of voting practices that required Section 5 review. As the Supreme Court put it in its 1966 decision upholding the constitutionality of the Act:

Congress had found that case-by-case litigation was inadequate to combat wide-spread and persistent discrimination in voting, because of the inordinate amount of time and energy required to overcome the obstructionist tactics invariably encountered in these lawsuits. After enduring nearly a century of systematic resistance to the Fifteenth Amendment, Congress might well decide to shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims.

South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 327-28 (1966).

The 1970 and 1975 Amendments

Congress extended Section 5 for five years in 1970 and for seven years in 1975. With these extensions Congress validated the Supreme Court's broad interpretation of the scope of Section 5. During the hearings on these extensions Congress heard extensive testimony concerning the ways in which voting electorates were manipulated through gerrymandering, annexations, adoption of at-large elections, and other structural changes to prevent newly-registered black voters from effectively using the ballot. Congress also heard extensive testimony about voting discrimination that had been suffered by Hispanic, Asian and Native American citizens, and the 1975 amendments added protections from voting discrimination for language minority citizens.

In 1973, the Supreme Court held certain legislative multi-member districts unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment on the ground that they systematically diluted the voting strength of minority citizens in Bexar County, Texas. This decision in White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755 (1973), strongly shaped litigation through the 1970s against at-large systems and gerrymandered redistricting plans. In Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980), however, the Supreme Court required that any constitutional claim of minority vote dilution must include proof of a racially discriminatory purpose, a requirement that was widely seen as making such claims far more difficult to prove.

The 1982 Amendments

Congress renewed in 1982 the special provisions of the Act, triggered by coverage under Section 4 for twenty-five years. Congress also adopted a new standard, which went into effect in 1985, providing how jurisdictions could terminate (or "bail out" from) coverage under the provisions of Section 4. Furthermore, after extensive hearings, Congress amended Section 2 to provide that a plaintiff could establish a violation of the Section without having to prove discriminatory purpose.

The 2006 Amendments

Congress renewed the special provisions of the Act in 2006 as part of the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Cesar E. Chavez, Barbara Jordan, William Velazquez and Dr. Hector Garcia Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act. The 2006 legislation eliminated the provision for voting examiners.

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By 1965 concerted efforts to break the grip of state disfranchisement had been under way for some time, but had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved almost entirely ineffectual. The murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism.

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"The system isn't in place where we can vote for our liberation. It's in place to reform itself for the better domestically. We don't demand more from the system because the system was never designed to help everyone in the first place," Ebony Short, a black 22-year-old cofounder of Georgia State University Panthers for Black Feminism, tells Teen Vogue, speaking about how the U.S. electoral system, built in the 18th century, was created to protect the interests of states with large slave populations.

"Choosing not to vote, as I have done in the past and will do now, is the active decision to control - in some part - how I am engaging (or [not engaging]) a system I never opted to be a part of," explains Da'Shaun Harrison, a 22-year-old black organizer, writer, and former student at Morehouse College. "There are ways to be civically engaged without legitimizing this two-party system, so choosing to take ownership of my right to not legitimize this system via electoral politics is a moral and just - morally just - decision."

These young folks have valid reasons for deciding not to play further into U.S. capitalism, imperialism, and white supremacy. Many feel as if voting for legislation, initiatives, or policies that have proven to be inefficient for those on the margins is a vote for a continued system of disenfranchisement. These young black and brown folks are aware of the forces of white supremacy that they must experience, and have chosen the act of not voting as a means to make space to fight for a new and better world.

Some of those who abstain from voting donate their vote to incarcerated or undocumented folks, doing so with an understanding that the electoral system is one that is rooted in a need to protect state interests by keeping these vulnerable populations from having a voice. They find other ways to engage with their communities, outside of the voting booth.

"Nonvoters are behind the free-food drives, hurricane relief efforts, political education meetings, and more. Voting has an impact, but the people have the power," Gayla Tillman, a black 21-year-old organizer from Atlanta, and a student at Georgia State, tells Teen Vogue.

These decisions aren't made without an understanding of very real voter-suppression tactics at play throughout the country and the privilege that comes with being a U.S. citizen who can vote. These are black and brown young folks who have grown up in the Black Lives Matter era, who are looking to socialism and communism for answers about what a new social and economic reality could look like. They are people whose political identities and beliefs range outside the mainstream: Some are prison abolitionists, Marxist-Leninists, and anarchists. Many are young folks who have been on the front lines of social change and protests and refuse to compromise their politics for the sake of liberalism.

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"It's a System I Never Opted to Be a Part Of": Young People Tell Us Why They Didn't Vote

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In an op-ed for "Teen Vogue," Clarissa Brooks looks at how imperialism, white supremacy, and other issues factor into decisions not to vote in elections.

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In this op-ed, Melina Fike, a leader of Berkeley, California's Vote 16 Campaign and junior at Berkeley High School explains that the momentum of the #NeverAgain movement could spark engagement for young activist to lower the voting age in their states.
During the media surge after the Parkland school shooting, various adults in my life felt the need to express to me their amazement about the young activists in Florida. The concept that a group of high school students could be so motivated and effective was clearly something they had never seen before. While I share in the celebration of these students' strength in response to this tragedy, I am not shocked by their eloquence.

As a 16-year-old who has witnessed the informed perspectives of my peers in Berkeley, California, I am more than aware of the raw power that comes from the ideas of students. The discussions that youth are having, both locally and nationally, are difficult to view if you're standing on the other side of this daunting gap between two generations.

Some of the adults in our lives who make decisions concerning school safety are the same ones who are shocked by the outspoken Parkland victims, who are now activists at the center of a national debate. These adults are the same people who make decisions on how to educate students on safety, whether it's about practicing safe sex, healing after a hate crime, or responding to someone bringing an assault weapon on your school's campus.

So why, to these adults, does the aftermath of this school shooting feel different? It's because the narratives of the Parkland victims are demanding attention, and this is something our country is not used to.

In Takoma Park, Hyattsville, Greenbelt, and Berkeley, four cities with liberal reputations and progressive voting right stances, teenagers are being listened to, perhaps more often than in other parts of the country. These cities let 16 and 17 year olds vote in local elections. In 2016, I joined a small group of politically frustrated high school students that decided to organize for a lower school board voting age in Berkeley. After seeing the high level of engagement so many youth in our city already had, we knew it was unacceptable for us not to have democratic influence on the decisions that affect not only the ways our public schools are run, but how we are kept safe at school.

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The Voting Age Could Be Lowered in Response to #NeverAgain

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16-year-olds can already vote in four cities. and young activists are trying to lower the voting age nationwide in response to #NeverAgain.

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Does your vote count? The Electoral College explained - Christina Greer

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Opinion | Why Americans Don’t Vote (and What to Do About It) (Published 2018)

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If Didn’t Vote had been a candidate in the 2016 election, it would have won by a landslide.

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Felons in Florida Regained Voting Rights on Tuesday

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The battleground state of Florida just became even more unpredictable now that felons in the state have regained the right to vote.

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Earlier this month, a Washington, D.C., city councilman proposed what hasn't been a widely embraced idea in recent years: lowering the voting age threshold in local and federal elections from 18 to 16.

Charles Allen had attempted to pass his bill once before, in 2015, but it died in committee. This time, he said, he thinks there's more support. Since the early 2010s, a handful of communities, mostly clustered in the suburbs of D.C., have already lowered the voting age to 16 for local elections, and other cities are considering similar legislation.

As young people across the country have staged protests and pressured their lawmakers for action on gun violence, largely in response to the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, the question of when teens ought to have an electoral voice has resurfaced.

Constitutional law expert Michael Morley said states, for the most part, are empowered to define their own electorates. States have broader power than Congress to set the voting age for state and local elections, though Congress regulates federal offices, he added.

Here's a look at the issue, and what it might mean for the 2018 and 2020 elections.
Why is the voting age 18?
In 1970, Congress passed a series of amendments to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of which lowered the national voting age from 21 to 18. After the amendments passed, states had one of three options, Morley said. They could comply, they could ignore the new law and wait until then-Attorney General John Mitchell enforced the rule by suing the states, or they could do what Oregon chose to do: preemptively sue Mitchell on the grounds that the amendments were unconstitutional.

Later that year, the Supreme Court heard arguments for Oregon v. Mitchell, and ultimately mostly ruled in favor of the state; the Court said Congress only had the authority to legislate voting over previously passed amendments which regulated voting rights (the 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments, for example), and over federal elections. State and local elections, the Supreme Court said, were regulated solely by the states.

But nationally, a movement was growing in favor of lowering the voting age, Morley said. The nation had been embroiled in the Vietnam War for years, and the sentiment that began to emerge was that if young men (and women) were old enough to fight in the U.S. military, they were old enough to vote. In 1971, Congress proposed the 26th amendment, and it was ratified by three quarters of the states in a matter of months - the fastest ratification of an amendment to date, Morley said.
Who has lowered the voting age since then?
According to Brandon Klugman, campaign coordinator at Vote16USA, an organization which lobbies for lowering the voting age, currently four other cities have laws allowing 16- or 17-year-olds to vote: three Maryland cities - Takoma Park, Greenbelt, and Hyattsville - allow 16-year-olds to vote in local elections; and Berkeley, California, allows 16-year-olds to vote in school board elections only.

Many states also allow 17-year-olds to vote in state and presidential primary elections if they turn 18 before the general election, according to FairVote.
Why the D.C. campaign is complicated
D.C. is a unique case. Though it operates as a city, it's also a district under federal control. So, while the 50 states can change their individual voting age requirements, only D.C. is also under the watchful eye of Congress, which can overturn legislation from the city if it wants to, Morley said.
What supporters say
Allen has a laundry list of reasons he believes the voting age is too high. Among them: 16-year-olds should have a stake in laws which affect them, such as education policy; research suggests that a strong predictor for voting habits is a record of previous voting; and as student activists around the country have demonstrated, many teenagers, "have very well thought out positions and frankly, in many cases, they're leading the adults," Allen said.

For Allen, however, perhaps his greatest motivation is that many 16-year-olds are taxpayers who cannot vote for their own elected representation. That issue speaks strongly to a councilmember in D.C., which does not have voting representation in Congress.

Allen has re-introduced his bill at a time when a youth movement is unfolding across the country, with students and teenagers are participating in advocacy, activism, and even government itself.

The national voting rights advocacy group FairVote supports Allen's bill. "Sixteen and 17-year-olds are affected by the same policies or even policies in a different way than older voters are," said Dave O'Brien, legal fellow at FairVote. "Sometimes, they'll be affected by those policies longer," like the environment, the national debt, and decisions about war. "It seems only right that they should have some sort of input into it," he added.
What critics say
Some critics say 16-year-olds aren't mature enough or don't have enough life experience.

"The arguments for lowering the voting age to 18 don't entirely translate to lowering it to 16," Morley said, referring to the 1970 campaign. "You had the notion that 18 was already adulthood in several other contexts," such as facing the draft, establishing households, and starting families. But Morley doesn't necessarily think those arguments apply to 16-year-olds, who in most cases are still legally required to attend school and generally depend on parental support.

Allen doesn't see legal adulthood as relevant.

"I think that young people have a stake in election outcomes. At age 16 your relationship with the law changes dramatically, from being able to drive on city streets to having a job and paying taxes," he said.

"There are a lot of 16- and 17-year-olds that also walk around everyday with adult responsibilities," Allen said. "Not only are they having jobs, they're a part of helping run a family. Some of them may even have kids of their own. When you think about what those responsibilities are, why shouldn't they have a voice in helping shape that?"
Why it matters
Historically, political parties have struggled to get 18- to 24-year-olds to show up on Election Day. According to census data, 50.9 percent of the 18- to 24-year-old population voted in the 1964 presidential election. While turnout was similar in the subsequent presidential election, the percentage of voters in that age bracket hasn't been as high since. The percentage didn't crack 40 percent in the 2016 election.

Despite that history, Allen thinks young people are demonstrating a willingness to get engaged. He pointed to Takoma Park, Maryland, as one example. A FairVote analysis of the 2013 election in Takoma Park showed that about 17 percent of 16- and 17-year-old eligible voters cast a ballot in the local election. That's about double the 8.5 percent of eligible 18-year-olds.

"They've shown that they will vote, and they'll vote repeatedly which is good for civics. They're getting engaged now and becoming lifelong voters," Allen said.

At FairVote, O'Brien said that it's possible that allowing teens to vote could impact the voting decisions of the larger electorate. "There might be concerns that older voters might perceive younger voters, or at least that section of the electorate, as somehow less legitimate because they're too immature," O'Brien said. "But you have that same concern whenever a new group is a brought to the electorate, whether it's women or African-Americans."

Neither Allen nor O'Brien sees the issue as partisan - "there are young people who are going to be of all political persuasions," Allen said - but Morley isn't as convinced.

Given that data suggests today's youth tend to vote more Democratic, Morley says jurisdictions' efforts to lower the voting age "could be seen not so much as an attempt to rectify some injustice, but instead as a means of trying to stack the electoral deck" in favor of Democrats.
What's next?
Klugman at Vote16USA said many states are making a good effort to increase voter turnout among young people. Currently, 13 states and D.C. allow for voter pre-registration at age 16. In California, a new law will go into effect this month, in which 16 and 17-year-olds will be pre-registered to vote when they get a driver's license. They'll have to opt out if they don't want to register.

And Klugman said that state legislators in at least three other states - New York, Virginia and Minnesota - have introduced bills to lower the voting age in state and local elections, federal elections, or both.

The next step for the D.C. bill is a hearing at the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, which Allen chairs. He said since four of the five committee members co-introduced the bill, he anticipates it will be voted on fairly quickly this summer. It will then move to a vote before the entire city council, and, if successful, to Mayor Muriel Bowser's desk (Bowser's press secretary, LaToya Foster, said the mayor will support the bill).

By 2020, Allen hopes 16- and 17-year-olds will be able to vote in both local and federal races.

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Earlier this month, a Washington, D.C., city councilman proposed what hasn't been a widely embraced idea in recent years: lowering the voting age threshold in local and federal elections from 18 to 16.

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Just in the past few months, elections in the U.S. have been decided by hundreds of votes.

The 2016 presidential election tilted to Donald Trump with fewer than 80,000 votes across three states, with a dramatic impact on the country. Yet, only about 6 in 10 eligible voters cast ballots in 2016.

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Among the other 4 in 10 who did not vote was Megan Davis. The 31-year-old massage therapist in Rhode Island never votes, and she's proud of her record.

"I feel like my voice doesn't matter," she said on a recent evening at a park in East Providence, R.I. "People who suck still are in office, so it doesn't make a difference."

Davis might sound contrarian, but she's not. Although these days more Americans say they're enthusiastic about voting in a midterm election than at any point in the last two decades, come Election Day, nonvoters like Davis will still probably be the norm. For every 10 adults eligible to vote, only about four cast a ballot in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.

You have to go back to the turn of the 20th century to find a midterm election when a solid majority of people voted (of course, back then, the right to vote was far more limited, so the eligible voting pool was smaller, more male and more white).

Every election cycle there's a lot of attention on who voted and why. But there's another important question: W ho is not voting - and what impact does that have?

The wealthy tend to vote more frequently. Nonvoters are more likely to be poor, young, Hispanic or Asian-American. Some research also indicates they're more likely to align with the Democratic Party.

It's debatable whether election results would be different if the entire population voted, but voting determines more than which candidate wins or loses. It ultimately influences which policies elected officials enact and whose interests candidates ignore and acknowledge.

"The one consistent finding from 1972 up through 2008 and in subsequent elections are that voters and nonvoters have different preferences on economic policies," said Jan Leighley, co-author with Jonathan Nagler of the book Who Votes Now? Demographics, Issues, Inequality, and Turnout in the United States.

Her research found that nonvoters are more likely, for example, to support a redistribution of wealth, housing bailouts and expanded social safety net programs.

Hundreds of thousands of nonvoters want to vote, but can't.

In 2016, 4 percent of registered voters did not vote because of "registration problems," according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. Many would-be voters face a range of barriers: voter ID laws, registration difficulty or criminal records. An estimated 10 percent of adults in Florida, for example, can't vote because of a felony conviction.

Some people who want to vote but can't have been removed from the voting rolls. Across the country, the rate at which people are being purged from the voting rolls, a process historically intended to keep records updated, has increased substantially compared to a decade ago, according to a report from the Brennan Center published this summer. The analysis found 4 million more people were purged between 2014 and 2016 than in the equivalent period between 2006 and 2008.

Legal obstacles are an important part of the nonvoter story, but there are many millions of Americans who can vote and yet choose not to. Their reasons are vast: Some are apathetic or too busy. Others don't like their choices, they don't think their vote matters, they think the system is corrupt, or they don't think they know enough to vote.

NPR traveled to four states where different factors affect why people aren't voting at high levels - age, income, education level, and habits.

Las Vegas: The young and disengaged

Shelby Mabis, a stocky blonde Marine corps veteran, remembers taking a government class in high school, but said he didn't learn anything about voting.

"From what all I know about voting is you show up to a poll place and you vote, but I don't know what I need to bring. I don't even know what happens during there," said Mabis, 23, outside of his mandatory political science class at a community college in North Las Vegas. And so he's never voted before.

Mabis is not unusual. There's a high density of people in his area who don't vote, as in many places.

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"Whenever young people are surveyed, there is a significant lack of knowledge about how exactly the government works, and, therefore, how their vote actually matters," said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, the director of CIRCLE, an initiative at Tufts University that studies youth civic and political participation. She recently conducted a survey of working-class youth, and found that nearly 20 percent of young people said they don't think they know enough to be able to vote.

Her research has found that a majority of young people don't think voting is an effective way to change society. They also have major misconceptions about voting. Some think getting a citation for driving under the influence meant they could no longer vote.

But for Mabis, not voting is not just about education - it's about location.

"Right now, being away from home, I don't feel connected to the political system here at all," he said, referring to Nevada. "Since I'm not from here, I really feel like this isn't my home."

Mabis grew up in Missouri, and that's where he registered to vote. But he said it's not easy to stay connected to Missouri politics.

Analysts say this is common - young people are more often transient and so they often feel less invested in local elections.

Youth turnout nationwide for midterms is around 20 percent. For older adults, it's closer to 50 percent. When you look at who votes frequently over many years, the numbers look even starker.

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In over a dozen interviews, NPR heard similar reasons from young nonvoters for why they don't participate in politics: they don't feel their vote matters, they don't care, they're busy, or they don't feel like they know enough to vote.

But in some cases, they're also particularly eager to choose individual candidates instead of a party label. In 2016, many said they felt uninspired by both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

So, like Jonas Rand, they didn't vote for president.

"I don't believe it is actually effective to vote as a main method of accomplishing political change," said Rand, a senior who studies anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Rand follows the news closely, he considers himself a political activist, but he's not a fan of the current two-party political system.

"The system itself is stacked against the citizenry," he said.

He thinks Trump is a "fascist," but still he doesn't see how voting for Clinton would have changed anything, pointing out that Nevada's votes in the Electoral College went for Clinton anyhow.

But if young people don't vote, they're less likely to be targeted by political campaigns. And that worries community activist Francisco Morales.

"It's no coincidence that politicians care a lot about Medicare and Social Security. Seniors vote all the time," said Morales, state director for the Center for Community Change Action.

But, he says, issues that millennials care about, such as student debt, are often overlooked "because politicians are not afraid of our voting bloc."

West Virginia: The class divide

McDowell County, W.Va., is the county with the lowest voter turnout in a state that had one of the lowest turnout rates in the country in 2016.

In Welch, W.Va., the county seat, median household income hovers around $25,000 a year. Sixty one percent of registered voters in McDowell County are nonvoters, people who have voted zero or one time in the last eight elections, according to a review of data from L2, a nonpartisan voter file vendor.

Tammy Lester, a 42-year-old fast food worker in McDowell County, W.Va., can't remember the last time she voted.

"We vote these people in and they don't help McDowell County," she said, as she walked along the deserted streets in the rundown downtown with her daughter. "There's nothing ... there's no jobs when our kids graduate, they have to leave."

Beyond a movie theater, a small pharmacy, and a couple of county offices, most of the storefronts are closed. A couple of years ago, the closest Walmart shut down, and now there's hardly anywhere locals can buy fresh produce.

Lester said politicians always ignore her county. "We are last on everything," she said.

"What good does it do, though, when they'll promise you anything and then it's a lie," she asked rhetorically.

Lester, like many nonvoters, never went to college. She stopped going to school in eighth grade. Research has shown the biggest and most persistent difference between who votes and who doesn't is education and economics. Class is a more accurate predictor of voting behavior than race, ethnicity, gender or any other demographic factor, according to Jan Leighley. Leighley writes in her book Who Votes Now? that nearly 80 percent of high-income earners vote, compared to barely 50 percent of low-income Americans.

"I just don't think my vote matters," said Josh Mullins, as he pushed a stroller along the street in McDowell County.

The last time Mullins, a 33-year-old unemployed former restaurant worker, remembers voting was in 2004 for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Nowadays, he sees no point, saying the system overrules what people want.

"Hillary [Clinton] won the popular vote and we still have Trump for president," he said. "To me it says ... it was just the [Electoral College] that put Trump in office." Voters in each state determined the Electoral College outcome.

Another major reason people say they don't vote is the time and effort taken away from other priorities.

"They're working several jobs, they're low-income, they're low-education, they're younger and they decide the costs are too high for them," explained Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida who tracks turnout at the U.S. Elections Project. "They decide they've got a lot of other things going on in their lives."

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El Paso, Texas: Low Latino turnout

At the Bowie Bakery, a popular institution in El Paso's Segundo Barrio, or second ward, Christina Rodriguez examined the glass cases filled with Mexican sweet breads, tres leches cakes, cupcakes, cookies and pastries. She ordered a batch of cookies for her 15-year-old's quinceañera and made her way to the door.

Rodriguez, a 38-year-old single, working mom, is always on the go. It's why, she says, she doesn't vote.

"I don't even know who's running,'" she said, laughing with a bit of embarrassment. "I should look into it, but, honestly, I haven't given it more than a thought."

She doesn't have time, she said, to look up the candidates, research their platforms and head to the polls.

"I'd rather not show up and do an uneducated guess," she said. "I don't want to make a mistake."

Growing up, her parents never voted either. Voting, she said, wasn't part of the culture in this border city where over 80 percent of residents identify as Latino.

"Voting is often taught and it may take a couple generations to become a habit," said Lisa Wise, the elections administrator in El Paso.

Some immigrant families are still unfamiliar with voting. Experts suggest this might also explain why Asian-American voter participation is low, despite high education levels. The adult Asian-American population is largely still foreign-born.

"I do what I do to make my life better," said Rodriguez. "I don't depend on (politicians) to change things for me."

But analysts say low Latino turnout in Texas isn't occurring in a vacuum. Texas has long been home to one of the worst voter turnout rates in the country; 51.6 percent of Texans voted in 2016.

Research has shown that competition energizes the electorate, and Texas is largely not seen as a competitive state, particularly in presidential years. Locals say they have a joke in El Paso that the only time a major presidential candidate passes through the city is when he's driving to New Mexico.

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"Texas has not had the swing state machine that we've seen in other places around the country," said Mindy Romero, director of the California Civic Engagement Project at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. "There aren't those resources, money, and investment coming into the state to get every voter." This is also an issue in California, the state with the largest Latino population.

Broad political apathy seeps into local and statewide elections, too. At the Bowie Bakery in El Paso, most customers didn't know that their native son, Beto O'Rourke, is running in a closely watched Senate race against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz. They didn't know that if O'Rourke wins he would be the first Democratic senator elected from Texas in a quarter century.

It also doesn't help engage voters that El Paso has had a history of corrupt elected officials.

Texas is undoubtedly one of the highest nonvoting states in the country, but poor Latino turnout goes far beyond the borders of Texas.

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More than half of eligible Latinos nationally don't vote. In the last presidential election, Latinos represented 12 percent of eligible voters nationwide, but only 9 percent of the overall electorate on Election Day.

Many analysts predicted that Donald Trump's offensive rhetoric about Latinos would mobilize records numbers of Latino voters in 2016, but turnout remained relatively even with 2012.

"You may be upset about somebody like Donald Trump and what you're hearing," said Romero. "But if you don't see how or why ... politicians and the political landscape matters for you ... you don't think you have agency,"

Romero points to two main reasons so many Latinos are nonvoters: the disconnect they feel with the political process and the anemic investment in outreach.

But Romero doesn't blame the Latino community, she and Leighley both point out that candidates rarely try to reach new voters.

"This idyllic notion that campaigns are out there to get everyone to vote is simply not true," said Leighley. "They need one more vote than their opponent, they will go to people based on those voter files that they know have voted before and they focus on them."

It's more expensive and time consuming to chase down infrequent voters.

Methodology
NPR used data from L2, a nonpartisan voter file vendor, to analyze and illustrate what differentiates nonvoters from frequent nonvoters. Because our data set is derived from a voter file, it's limited to registered nonvoters, as opposed to unregistered nonvoters. We defined a "nonvoter" as someone who voted in zero or one of the last eight elections, and a "frequent voter" as someone who voted in six, seven or eight of the last eight elections. Those eight elections includes both primary and general elections, which means the data goes back to approximately 2010 nationwide, varying slightly in some states like those with off-year elections. So, if someone voted one time in the last eight years, perhaps for Barack Obama in 2008 or Donald Trump in 2016, but did not participate in any other elections, they would be characterized as a "nonvoter."

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On The Sidelines Of Democracy: Exploring Why So Many Americans Don't Vote

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In recent midterms, 4 in 10 eligible voters cast ballots. Nonvoters talk of apathy, disgust, barriers and other reasons. But those who don't vote, and their interests, can be ignored by candidates.

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National Constitution Center - The 26th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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The 26th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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SECTION. 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

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National Constitution Center - The 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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The 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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SECTION. 1. 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.

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National Constitution Center - The 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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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 sex.