How to Steal an Election: With partisan redistricting and voter suppression laws, Republicans are rigging the system to avoid losing power.

• Author: Masciotra, David

The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, demonstrated exactly how little the United States has progressed since the civil rights era. The right, still battling against the foundation and promise of a multiracial democracy, has demonstrated its willingness to use violent means to preserve political control. Meanwhile, Republican leaders are launching a less obvious and more mechanical attack on the idea of a fairly elected government.

Patricia Sullivan, a historian at the University of South Carolina and author of the stirring and important new book Justice Rising: Robert Kennedys America in Black and White, told me in an interview that, due to partisan redistricting and a slew of voter suppression laws, we are living through a period of widespread Black disenfranchisement. The U.S. Supreme Court decision to undermine the federal oversight provisions of the Voting Rights Act in a 2013 case, Shelby County v. Holder, created an opening for rightwing, anti-democratic forces to, she says, "limit access to the ballot" and "dilute the impact of Democratic-leaning voters, with a focus on Black voters."

This is especially true in the Carolinas, Sullivan contends: "In addition to requiring a government-issued ID, South Carolina has several provisions in place to limit voting access. Residents must register thirty days before an election (the longest period allowed by federal law); access to absentee ballots is restricted (after a yearlong exception due to the pandemic) and require a witness signature; and residents convicted of a felony lose their voting rights while serving time in prison, or on probation or parole."

Black Americans, she says, account for 64 percent of citizens disenfranchised by this last requirement.

Many local activists and organizations are fighting against the disenfranchisement of Black voters, college students, disabled Americans, and other Democratic constituencies. One group committed to the preservation of the integrity of electoral politics is Democracy North Carolina. When I spoke with the organization's communications manager, Joselle Torres, she warned that an "array of extreme anti-voter attacks" threaten to "roll back decades of voter freedoms."

Republican legislators in North Carolina acted aggressively to limit the vote.

First, they passed Senate Bill 326, a measure to, in the words of Torres, "remove a safeguard that protects absentee voters from mail delays." Current law allows for the tallying of...