We Know What Voter Suppression Looks Like—So What Are We Doing Now?
A clear look at voting, participation, and what I saw firsthand turning out voters.
by Charlene Butts Ligon
I’ve been thinking a lot about voting lately—not just the policies, but the people.
I served as a county chair. Part of my job was to turn out voters. We did the work. We sent mailers. We ran ads. We made calls. We knocked on doors.
And still, I heard the same thing:
“I didn’t know.”
But when you look closer, it wasn’t that the information wasn’t there.
It was that some people:
didn’t open the door
didn’t answer the phone
didn’t read the mail
didn’t seek out information
At some point, we have to be honest about that.
Black folk know what voter intimidation looks like. We know what it means when the system is set up to keep you out. Poll taxes, literacy tests, threats—we’ve lived that history. People fought and died to secure the right to vote. My own work has been tied to that legacy.
So when I hear “I didn’t know,” I have to ask:
Did you try to know?
Today, we have more ways to vote than ever before. You can vote early. You can vote by mail. You can vote on Election Day. The information is available in more places than ever.
And yet—participation is still the problem.
We can talk about policies all day long. We can debate mail-in voting, ID laws, deadlines. But none of it matters if people don’t show up.
The truth is simple:
Democracy requires participation. And participation requires effort.
We can make voting accessible. We should make it clear. But we cannot make people care.
At some point, being an informed citizen requires intention.
You can’t ignore every knock, every call, every message—and then say no one told you.
We know what it looks like when the door is closed.
So when the door is open, we have to walk through it.
