A Lesson on Voting Rights—And Suppression—During a Pandemic that Students Won’t Learn in Textbooks

There is a great deal of drama in Wisconsin over whether the primary elections scheduled for Tuesday should be held as planned during the coronavirus pandemic. Gov. Tony Evers (D) is calling for it to be postponed out of concern for exposing voters to the novel disease unnecessarily, but Republican legislators are insisting it take place despite the risks.

Evers convened a special session of the legislature on Saturday, during which the Republican-led body would not consider a proposal to cancel in-person voting. In addition, Republicans have asked the Supreme Court to block an extension of a deadline for mail-in ballots.

Critics of the Republican insistence say it is an attempt to make it harder for voters who historically vote for Democrats from going to the polls. And they say that voter-suppression efforts are happening elsewhere.

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With a presidential election months away and uncertainty about whether and how the pandemic might affect it, here is a lesson for students and everybody else on the history of voter suppression in this country.