When the United States Constitution took effect in 1789, roughly 6 percent of the population could vote. Voting was reserved almost entirely for white male property owners, reflecting the belief that only those with a financial stake in the country had earned a voice in its government. The Naturalization Act of 1790 reinforced this framework by restricting the path to citizenship and, therefore, voting to "free white" immigrants. The experiment of American self-government began with most of its people locked out.
Change came gradually and unevenly through the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Populist movements during the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian eras pushed states to drop property requirements one by one. New Hampshire led the way in 1792, religious barriers had largely disappeared by 1828, and North Carolina became the last state to remove property ownership as a voting requirement in 1856. All white men could now vote, but the walls around race and sex remained entirely intact.
The Civil War and its aftermath produced the most dramatic expansion of voting rights the country had seen. The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, declared that states could not deny the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. During Reconstruction, Black men voted in large numbers, held public office across the South, and sent representatives to Congress. Over 1,500 Black men served in state and local governments between 1865 and 1876.
That progress was systematically dismantled in the decades that followed. Poll taxes required voters to pay a fee before casting a ballot, effectively pricing out poor Black voters. Literacy tests were administered selectively, rejecting educated Black applicants while passing white voters who could barely read. Grandfather clauses, like the one struck down in Guinn v. United States in 1915, exempted voters whose ancestors had voted before the 15th Amendment, ensuring the restrictions fell almost entirely on Black citizens.
The 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, extended the right to vote to women after decades of organizing, protest, and civil disobedience. But ratification did not mean full enfranchisement. Black women and other women of color remained subject to the same Jim Crow restrictions that blocked Black men, leaving them locked out despite the amendment's formal guarantee. The expansion of voting rights had again stopped short of including everyone.
The 1960s brought a wave of federal action targeting barriers that had survived for nearly a century. The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, abolished poll taxes in federal elections, and the Supreme Court extended that ban to state and local elections two years later in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 went further, outlawing literacy tests, authorizing federal examiners to register voters, and establishing preclearance, which required states with histories of discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing any voting rules. That same year, the Supreme Court upheld a provision protecting Puerto Rican voters from English-only literacy requirements in Katzenbach v. Morgan, establishing language access as a protected dimension of voting rights.
Within a decade of the Voting Rights Act's passage, the registration gap between white and Black voters had fallen from nearly 30 percentage points to 8. The 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971, lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, driven by the argument that young men being drafted to fight in Vietnam deserved a vote on the decisions that sent them there. In 1993, the National Voter Registration Act reduced registration barriers by requiring states to offer voter registration at motor vehicle agencies and public assistance offices, pushing registration rates to their highest levels since reliable records began.
In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that the formula used to determine which states were subject to preclearance was unconstitutional, effectively ending federal oversight of voting rule changes in those states. In the years that followed, hundreds of polling places closed, voter roll purges accelerated, and new restrictions took effect. Each prior expansion had targeted a specific barrier. Shelby County reopened the question of whether those barriers were truly gone, or simply waiting for the oversight to end.
In the years since 2013, court decisions and new laws have continued to shape voting access across the country. In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, making it more difficult to challenge voting restrictions under the Voting Rights Act. That same year, many states passed new laws that changed voting procedures, including requirements for identification and limits on ballot drop boxes. At the same time, other states expanded access by increasing early voting, allowing mail-in ballots, and creating automatic voter registration systems. In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in Allen v. Milligan, reaffirming parts of the Voting Rights Act by requiring Alabama to redraw a congressional map that weakened the voting power of Black residents. These actions show that debates over voting rights continue, with both expansions and new barriers shaping how Americans participate in elections.
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