Often attributed to Mark Twain — perhaps mistakenly, since no historical source shows he actually made the statement — “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” is a common and apt refrain when discussing the connection between historical perspectives and current events. By drawing on knowledge of what happened in the past, and why, we are better able to understand the flow and direction of the history collectively created in each new day.
“Past Rhymes With Present Times” is a series by Lloyd S. Kramer exploring historical context and frameworks, and how the foundations of the past affect the building of the future.
The right to vote in free elections creates the permanent foundation for America’s democratic system of representative government. Voting rights build our democracy, and they are connected to all the other ‘unalienable” rights in the United States, including the rights to free speech, a free press, and a free public education.
As we enter the final weeks of another high-stakes election season in our state and nation, however, we can see that lots of American citizens have little interest in voting and lots of political leaders would like to impede the voting rights of citizens whom they fear or dislike.
Why People Can and Should Vote
The equal rights of citizens to elect their governing leaders is a distinctive historical development in modern nations. Nobody asked people who lived under empires and kingdoms over the past five thousand years if they wanted to choose the people who made their laws.
Whenever you look at the non-democratic systems in almost every past historical era, you better understand the radicalism of the Americans who Declared in 1776 that “all men are created equal” and that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
This idea launched the new nation’s struggle to create a democratic republic. But the equal voting rights for all adult American citizens were defined much later in the Constitution’s 15th Amendment (ratified in 1870), which states that “the right… to vote shall not be denied… on account of race [or] color,” and in the 19th Amendment (ratified in 1920), which states that no citizen’s voting rights can be denied “on account of sex.”
Parade of suffragettes in New York in 1912.
These Amendments emerged from long political movements that struggled to expand American democracy, yet this history seems to carry little personal relevance for millions of American citizens. Even in the polarizing presidential election of 2024, for example, only 64% of eligible Americans decided to vote; and the numbers were even lower in non-presidential elections such as 2022 (46% of eligible voters cast a ballot), 2018 (50%) or 2014 (37%).
Men and women of all races can thus vote in present-day North Carolina because of past conflicts and personal sacrifices; but they should vote to honor those who established their equal rights, and they should continue voting to protect themselves from those who are forever trying to diminish the rights or influence of the people they fear.
Why and How People Lose Their Right to Vote
The white campaign to reduce Black voting rights began immediately after the post-Civil-War ratification of the 15th Amendment. North Carolina’s white political elite, for example, consolidated state control over county election boards and then amended the state constitution in 1900 to impose a “literacy test” that enabled county officials to prevent Black men and Native Americans from voting (e.g., by asking would-be voters to cite specific sections of the state constitution).
These legislative interventions effectively ended Black voting rights by the time of North Carolina’s gubernatorial election in 1904, and white registrars used the “literacy test” as a systemic obstacle to Black voter registrations over the following 60 years.
Overt discrimination against Black voter registration therefore became a key target of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in events such as the march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama, which the police violently attacked at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in March 1965.
Civil Rights Movement Co-Founder Dr. Ralph David Abernathy and his wife Mrs. Juanita Abernathy follow with Dr. and Mrs. Martin Luther King as the Abernathy children march on the front line, leading the SELMA TO MONTGOMERY MARCH in 1965. The Children are Donzaleigh Abernathy in striped sweater, Ralph David Abernathy, 3rd and Juandalynn R. Abernathy in glasses. Name of the white Minister in the photo is James Reeb. (photo source)
This blatant assault on the civil rights of Black Americans pushed President Lyndon Johnson and his political allies to pass the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, thereby taking the greatest Congressional step toward equal voting rights since the ratification of the 15th and 19th Amendments.
The VRA terminated the abusive literacy tests and required a new federal “preclearance” for all adjustments to election procedures in counties with long histories of anti-Black racial discrimination. This requirement specifically affected 40 counties in North Carolina and every county in numerous other southern states.
The VRA thus facilitated a huge increase in Black voter registrations, but this decisive legislative action also challenged “vote dilutions” that scattered Black voters into districts where white majorities could always win contested elections. Revising state legislative districts to ensure fairer representation for Black communities helped previously excluded candidates win some local and legislative elections, so that (for example) the number of Black legislators in the NC House rose from zero in 1966 to 13 by 1990.
Black political progress (including the election of President Barack Obama) showed that the VRA provided institutional safeguards against resurgent right-wing reactions to the legacies of the Civil Rights movement, but the anti-VRA movement won a great political victory in 2013 when the Supreme Court ruled (in Shelby County vs. Holder) that the “preclearance” requirements of the VRA must now be suspended.
Republican-controlled state legislatures could thus begin enacting “voter-restriction” laws that ranged from new Voter identification requirements to the reduction of polling sites and Sunday options for early voting.
As the political scientists Michael G. Miller and Kevin T. Morris argue in an important new book, there is “substantial evidence” that the gutting of the Voting Rights Act has “materially undermined political representation for Americans of color.”
Two main strategies replicated the earlier objectives of the now-illegal “literacy tests” and diluted the electoral influence of non-white voters. The first strategy created obstacles to voter registration (e.g., by requiring specific kinds of identification documents) and impeded convenient voting methods (e.g., by discarding “flawed” mail-in votes or reducing the number of polling sites).
The second strategy for diminishing the power of Black voters appeared in the precise gerrymandering that either “cracked” large Black or Democratic voting blocs into multiple districts (where they formed permanent minorities) or “packed” such voters into a single district (where they “wasted” votes in huge majorities). The combined effects of “cracking” and “packing” ensured continual reelection of the ruling party’s legislative majority.
-Shelby destruction of the VRA thus discouraged voting wherever election outcomes were predetermined in carefully gerrymandered legislative districts.
What Motivates People to Vote?
Academic theorists may “wish” that voters would rationally vote for leaders whose policies best serve the public good, but this optimistic view of “reasonable” democratic voting cannot explain the history or current realities of American elections. The political analyst Sarah Longwell argues in an engaging new book that most voters typically support candidates who know how to mobilize their anger or fears.
Drawing on ideas she learned from a colleague at a communications company, Longwell describes the strongest motivations for personal or group decision-making as flowing from five key FLAGS of human behavior: “fear, love, anger, greed, and sympathy.” Messages that “tap into” these emotions provide “the best way to convince people of your argument” because “fear and anger are the most powerful” human passions.
This can be disheartening for fact-minded historians who prefer rational arguments, but Longwell offers a persuasive summary for Trumpism’s political victories: “Fear about the loss of something,” she writes, “is more immediately visceral than hope for a [future] benefit.”
Why People Ignore Politics and Refuse to Vote
I’ve gained helpful perspectives on the popular indifference to voting by canvassing for legislative candidates in neighborhoods where their potential supporters rarely participate in elections. Knocking on doors leads to interesting conversations with fellow-citizens whom political pollsters may categorize as “low information” or “low frequency” voters because they often refuse to cast a ballot.
Infrequent voters sometimes say (politely or with frustration) that “my vote doesn’t matter” because America’s huge population makes one vote meaningless; or such skeptics might simply complain that “all politicians are the same, and they don’t care about people like me.”
Such attitudes suggest that voting carries little or no relevance for your own life, but they also contribute to another common rationale for ignoring the right to vote: “nothing ever changes.” In other words, why should you vote if elections never give you what you need or want?
I recently encountered the well-argued claim that “nothing changes” while I was urging an older Black woman to vote in Person County. I listened carefully and suggested important political or economic reasons to vote in this year’s election, but I could not break through her skepticism.
This conversation nevertheless pushed me onward to the next door-knock with some churning reflections on how American society has changed because people demanded their voting rights in Person County and throughout the United States.
History may evolve slowly, but human actions eventually abolished the slave system, overturned racist Jim Crow laws, expanded voting rights, and elected long-excluded men and women to government offices in which they could reshape public policies.
There are painful historical reasons to fear that “nothing changes” when you vote, but the canvassing optimist tries to channel such emotions toward new desires to participate in elections and new hopes for changes in the skeptic’s personal or public life.
Encouraging People to Vote
The right to vote may become most valuable to people who are denied this right or who live under authoritarian systems that render their votes meaningless. Voting demands your time, thoughts, and public engagement, but people who lose or ignore their voting rights cede the conditions of their own lives to the power of self-interested elites. Voting rights have gradually expanded other human rights, constructed more inclusive public institutions, and created the best political methods for sustaining a multicultural democracy.
This complex historical reality can still inspire skeptical, pessimistic Americans to vote if they remember the aspirations and sacrifices of past generations and if they recognize that democracy itself now needs the support of every possible ballot.
Bloody Sunday (1965) – Alabama officers await demonstrators at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Photo via Lindsay Metivier
Lloyd Kramer is a professor emeritus of History at UNC, Chapel Hill, who believes the humanities provide essential knowledge for both personal and public lives. His most recent book is titled “Traveling to Unknown Places: Nineteenth-Century Journeys Toward French and American Selfhood,” but his historical interest in cross-cultural exchanges also shaped earlier books such as “Nationalism In Europe and America: Politics, Cultures, and Identities Since 1775” and “Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions.”
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