It is important that groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, can go to court and litigate voting rights questions. Part of the reason is that the Department of Justice is a government office with limited resources and a finite capacity to assess all of the different jurisdictions where voting takes place.

After years of legislative and social gridlock, these failings are at a critical stage. But irreversible damage to our historical values, our democracy, and our capitalism can be avoided. The last line of defense now, as in 1776, is citizens who can make informed decisions and have the patriotic courage to sacrifice, compromise, and overcome bias in the service of America. The 2020 revolution for America will depend on objectivity and critical thinking rather than firelocks and cannons.

Too often lost in the furor, however, is the far more damaging TrikiLeaks – the tricks and laws used to suppress the vote by partisans, largely Republicans here at home. After the Supreme Court’s right-wing gang of five gutted key sections of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby v. Holder, Republican-controlled states immediately ramped up efforts to create obstacles for voting, particularly for people of color.

After four months of political and legal wrangling, McAuliffe, a Democrat, announced he had signed individual orders allowing 13,000 ex-felons who had registered to vote after the governor’s April order, including Banks, to re-register. Now Banks is eager to vote in the November election. “I mean, I want to rejoin society and be a productive person in society,” he said. “I learned my lesson from my incarceration. If you’re willing to come back to society, be productive and do what you’re supposed to do in life, they should welcome you back with open arms.”

“Voter ID laws disadvantaging older persons place a burden on the voting rights of those most likely to participate in the electoral process,” said Daniel Kohrman, a senior attorney with the AARP Foundation Litigation office in Washington, D.C. That’s because older citizens vote at greater percentages than younger people. A total of 33 states have laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls this year. (West Virginia's new law goes into effect in 2018). 

For African Americans, the passage of the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965, represented the culmination of a centuries-long struggle for citizenship. President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the legislation, designed to end a century of voter disfranchisement in the South and other parts of the nation, was inspired by grassroots protests and organizing that gripped the nation. Martin Luther King Jr.’s efforts in Selma, Ala., linked a local campaign for voting rights to a national movement to redefine American democracy.

Arguing that every citizen should have the right to vote, Clinton argued the common sense position that we should do what we can to make voting easier, not make it harder. She called for restoring the Voting Rights Act, to ensure pre-screening of election law changes that potentially discriminate against classes of voters. She embraced the bipartisan presidential commission recommendations for expanding early absentee and mail voting and for ensuring that no one waits more than 30 minutes to cast a vote.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey, almost 13 percent of Hamilton County households –mostly in Cincinnati—do not own a vehicle, creating a potential barrier to early voting given the relatively difficult access to the new site. It is but one of several new laws and policies that rolls back access to the ballot box in Ohio, voting advocates say.

For example, Medicare, the federal health care program for people ages 65 and older, requires certain Lawful Permanent Residents to pay an expensive premium, depending on their work history and length of residence. Naturalization ensures access to Medicare on the same basis as all other Americans. The same is true of Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a public program that pays benefits to disabled adults and low-income children. Lawful Permanent Residents who came to the United States in refugee status may receive SSI regardless of work history or length of residence, but generally only for seven years. 

A Pew study specifically released to coincide with the 50th anniversary celebrations graphically made the point that the economic and social gaps between whites and African-Americans have widened over the last few decades despite massive spending by federal and state governments, state and federal civil rights laws, and two decades of affirmative action programs. The racial polarization has been endemic between blacks and whites on everything from the George Zimmerman trial to just about every other controversial case that involves black and white perceptions of the workings of the criminal justice system.