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Passive Voter Suppression: Campaign Mobilization And The Effective Disfranchisement Of The Poor, Bertrall L. Ross Ii, Douglas M. Spencer

Northwestern University Law Review

A recent spate of election laws tightened registration rules, reduced convenient voting opportunities, and required voters to show specific types of identification in order to vote. Because these laws make voting more difficult, critics have analogized them to Jim Crow Era voter suppression laws.

We challenge the analogy that current restrictive voting laws are a reincarnation of Jim Crow Era voter suppression. While there are some notable similarities, the analogy obscures a more apt comparison to a different form of voter suppression—one that operates to effectively disfranchise an entire class of people, just as the old form did for African …