Voting Rights
The right to vote, and to have one's vote accurately and fairly counted, is a fundamental right of all American citizens.
In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, one of the most effective civil rights laws ever enacted. The Act immediately outlawed the worst Jim Crow laws in the South, such as literacy tests and other devices that kept African-American citizens out of the voting booth.
Since then, however, threats to full voter enfranchisement have persisted, including electoral practices that abridge or dilute minority voting strength, implementation of voting technology that can undermine accurate and accountable vote counting, failure to provide adequate opportunities for voter registration and engage non English speakers, and wholesale disenfranchisement of voters based on criminal convictions. Often, these flaws in the voting system disproportionately affect people of color and serve to alienate already marginalized communities from the voting process.
The ACLU has been a voting rights watchdog. We believe we must reinvigorate the democratic process through policies that encourage voter participation, and avoid policies that impede citizens from exercising this hard-won right.
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