Ten years of a crippled Voting Rights Act: how states make it harder to vote

In 2013, the United States Supreme Court ended the pre-clearance requirement in a landmark case called Shelby county v Holder. Under pre-clearance, states with a history of suppressing voters were required to submit any voting changes for approval from the federal government before enacting them, but, after the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Shelby county v Holder, they no longer have to. Over the past 10 years, Helen Butler and a coalition of activists have taken on the task of monitoring local election boards in Georgia in an attempt to ensure voters in the state are not unnecessarily prevented from casting their ballots. According to the Voting Rights Lab, over the past ten years the state of Georgia has made it more difficult to vote by passing over 20 laws that restrict voting.

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