VOTER SUPPRESSION
“I am using “voter-suppression legislation” to include laws and constitutional provisions that historians, courts, civil-rights organizations, or voting-rights scholars have identified as intentionally exclusionary or as imposing substantial barriers on identifiable groups of otherwise eligible voters.
This is a representative national chronology of the most significant examples - not a catalog of every restrictive voting law enacted by every state” - Connie Kratovil-Lavelle
Chronological List of Legislative Efforts to Suppress Voting
Colonial period and the founding era
1600s–1700s — Colonial property, wealth, sex, race, and religious qualifications
Most colonies restricted voting to men who owned a prescribed amount of land or other property, paid taxes, belonged to an approved religion, or satisfied similar status requirements. The restrictions excluded most women, enslaved people, many free Black people, Indigenous people, servants, laborers, tenants, poor men, and—in some colonies—Catholics, Jews, Quakers, or other religious minorities. Voting was treated as a privilege of economically independent men rather than a universal right.
1776–1789 — State constitutions preserve a narrow electorate
After independence, state constitutions generally continued property, taxpaying, sex, race, residency, and religious qualifications. The U.S. Constitution did not create a uniform federal right to vote; it largely allowed each state to determine who could vote in elections for the most numerous branch of its state legislature. The result was that voting remained unavailable to most of the adult population. The Library of Congress notes that the Constitution left the qualifications of voters principally to the states. (loc.gov)
1787 — Three-Fifths Clause and protection of slavery
The Constitution’s Three-Fifths Clause increased the representation and electoral power of slaveholding states by counting enslaved people for apportionment while denying them any political
voice. This was not a voting qualification in the ordinary sense, but it was a constitutional arrangement that magnified the political power of white slaveholders while excluding the enslaved
population whose numbers produced that power.
1790 — Naturalization Act of 1790
Congress restricted naturalization to “free white persons.” Because citizenship was generally a prerequisite to voting, the law prevented Asian immigrants, enslaved people, and many free people of
color from naturalizing and thereby obtaining voting rights available to naturalized white men.
1798 — Naturalization Act of 1798
The Federalist-controlled Congress increased the residency period required for naturalization from five years to fourteen years. The measure delayed citizenship—and therefore voting eligibility—for immigrants, particularly Irish and French immigrants thought likely to support the Democratic-Republican Party. This is one of the clearest early federal examples of changing citizenship rules to
weaken an emerging opposition electorate.
