Did Voter Turnout Drop in Communities of Color After Shelby?

Not Another Politics Podcast

Nearly a decade ago, the Supreme Court effectively removed the "preclearance" process in its Shelby County v. Holder decision. That process had been implemented for decades as part of the Voting Rights Act and required places with a history of racial discrimination to get approval from the Justice Department before changing their voting procedures. When the Shelby decision came down, voting rights advocates and mobilization groups panicked. There were widespread fears that this decision would dramatically reduce voter participation in communities of color. Did they? The University of Rochester's Mayya Komisarchik and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Ariel White sought to answer that question in their recent paper, "Throwing Away the Umbrella: Minority Voting after the Supreme Court’s Shelby Decision." In this episode, we speak to Komisarchik about the impacts of the Shelby decision and whether our fears about countermobilization and voter suppression tactics have held true.