Post-Shelby voter restrictions disenfranchised Black voters and shaped the 2016 election.

Evidence

In the aftermath of this decision, multiple Republican-dominated states, freed of federal oversight, passed laws that disenfranchised Black people by limiting early voting and same-day registration and instituting voter ID laws that “targeted African American voters with surgical precision,” to quote the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Fourteen states had new voter restrictions in time for the 2016 election, including Ohio and Wisconsin. These new voter-suppression policies were crucial to Trump’s victory. And following Trump’s defeat in 2020, Republican state legislators have introduced more than 350 laws in forty-seven states that would make it harder for Americans, particularly Black Americans, to vote. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1245