Editor's note: This article is based on a talk delivered by Professor Gregory Downs in 2017. In 2013, the Shelby v. Holder U.S. Supreme Court decision gave states permission to change their election laws without needing advance clearance from the Department of Justice. This decision invalidated a portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which required preclearance with the DoJ to protect voters of color. Most people might ask: How did we get to this point? But history professor Gregory Downs (UC Davis) believes this as the wrong question. The United States, he argues, has never been a country where the government guaranteed the right to vote. Indeed, the United States is a country with a tradition of disenfranchisement, rather than enfranchisement. In his talk titled “Voting Rights Under Fire,” Downs argued that U.S. history could be defined by the struggle to expand and retract the vote. Far from being a recent development, “challenging registration laws and low voter turnou...