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The authors appreciate the valuable feedback they received from Joe Soss, David Kaib, Ian Vandewalker and our anonymous reviewers at Perspectives on Politics. They also thank Amanda Aykanian, Marija Bingulac, and Amanda Colligan, and for their excellent research assistance. Leila Farsakh, Luis Jimenez, and Zhang Wu provided very helpful, and much appreciated, guidance into an unfamiliar literature. We also owe a special debt of gratitude to Jeffrey Isaac for his exceptional guidance and support throughout.
In The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States Alexander Keyssar notes that "history rarely moves in simple, straight lines, and the history of suffrage is no exception."1The trajectory of voting rights and electoral access in the US is rightly seen as a story of the progressive extension of the franchise. However, often obscured by such broad narratives is the reality that electoral reforms have worked to both expand and restrict the franchise for particular categories of voters over time.2Exclusionary reforms are nearly universally enacted for partisan advantage, a temptation enabled by state responsibility for the administration and regulation of elections.3The struggle to shape access to the vote has intensified once again as the volume of legislation impacting electoral access has increased in recent years. We focus here on the increasing proposal and passage of state laws that place new restrictions on various aspects of both the voter registration process and the opportunity to actually cast a ballot. Required photo identification or proof of citizenship to vote, more stringent regulation of groups or individuals who aim to register new voters, shortened early voting periods, repeal of same-day voter registration, and increased restrictions on voting by felons exemplify the different types of policies that have been proposed and adopted in various states since the mid-2000s.4Figure 1 illustrates the rise in the volume of proposed restrictive changes since 2006 and the dramatic increase in restrictive legislation that actually passed in 2011. These policies stand in sharp contrast to trends in the late 1990s and early 2000s where many states expanded voting by mail and early voting--usually under the assumption that these policies would increase voter participation.5
Figure 1
Total count of...