This is the home of the Voting Rights History Civic Literacy (VRHCL) Project, a digital collection of curricular materials designed to highlight the history of voting, electoral politics, and republican governance in undergraduate U.S. History survey courses. VRHCL provides a structured approach to studying the evolution of political participation in U.S. History. Rather than a history of electoral politics, VRHCL is envisioned as way of exploring how the answers to questions central to elections have been resolved (or left unresolved) over time: Who can vote? How do they vote? How are votes counted? What does a vote mean? Exploring the mechanisms of voting and representation, students will get a better understanding of how historical actors have shaped and wielded power. They will also see where the nation and its political/judicial leadership have conformed to its republican ideals and deviated from them. Most fundamentally, they will learn that struggles over elections and representation are inherent to any system of self-governance.

Who can vote, how and when voting is done, how votes are counted and how legislative representation is divvied up have always been contentious political struggles. As events of recent years have shown, elections and voting rights remain contentious. Some perhaps lulled by the seeming stability of American elections, have expressed shock at laws designed to limit voting and attempts to tilt legislative apportionment to favor particular political interests or parties. In truth, American history is not only replete with examples of struggles over the ballot, but the question of political participation is central to the nation’s story. VRHCL’s premise is that a humanities-based approach that develops a complete and accurate narrative of the history of voting will make voting’s meaning less abstract providing students with concrete examples of how much it has mattered to the development of the nation.

VRHCL’s goal is to encourage students to see themselves as part of the larger history of political participation in the United States and, by extension, their importance in the maintenance of representative government. A just and equitable future is best achieved through a commitment to democratic practices. The best tool for building and sustaining this commitment is the teaching of history. Without knowledge of the history of voting and its meanings, voting becomes a ritual, not a practice of thoughtful citizenship. Voting becomes abstracted from its purpose and ultimately becomes meaningless to those who possess it. Without a sense of the past struggles to make the United States’ government more representative of its people, the vote is taken for granted. Without a sense of how earlier generations corrupted the vote or denied it to some Americans outright, it is impossible to protect voting from continued threats. 

Students need the right tools to become thoughtful, engaged, enthusiastic citizens. These include knowledge of the Constitution and the framework of civic participation, of course, but also a clear understanding that civics is never divorced from history, including the history in which students themselves are participating. VRHCL introduces them to the struggles of earlier generations to secure the vote so they can see how their own lives are connected to those who fought for democratic values. The nation’s republican institutions are under attack today in part because the historical narrative of the last generation offered students a triumphalist take on American political life that encouraged complacency. We had overcome, the narrative taught; the nation’s democracy had been perfected in the 1960s and 1970s. But the narrative glossed over the continued legacies of earlier eras (e.g., felon disfranchisement), overestimated the strength of legal rulings, and failed to account for continuing efforts to limit democratic participation by gerrymandering and other means. The world today’s students live in mocks this narrative. Students are apt to become cynical if we stick to it. However, if we show them that the struggle to maintain democracy never ended and that they are part of it, there is an opportunity to build their enthusiasm to participate in its defense.