As the 2026 midterm elections approach, the U.S. Supreme Court has been busy with voting rights cases.

In mid-September, the court barred the Trump administration from carrying out its proposed restrictions on mail-in voting for the midterm elections.

In late September, the court ruled that the Trump administration could continue with a plan for various federal agencies to use a controversial database to identify and cull ineligible voters on the voter rolls.

These decisions highlight the long history of struggles in the United States over who can vote, how votes are counted and who sets the rules that govern elections.

As scholars of elections and Southern politics, we have selected 10 important moments in U.S. voting history. The point is not to identify the definitive 10, but rather to underscore that battles over the franchise are long-standing and do not move in a single direction.

Passed by Congress in 1869, the 15th Amendment was the final Reconstruction-era amendment. It said that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

This amendment helped bring about widespread participation by Black men and the election of many Black candidates to key positions in Southern states. In South Carolina, over 250 African American men were elected during Reconstruction, and South Carolina’s Joseph H. Rainey became the first African American to serve in the U.S. House.

The amendment’s language was clear and permanent, but much of the progress that followed was short-lived. During the Jim Crow era, Southern states used literacy tests, grandfather clauses and other barriers to deny Black citizens the vote.

Aiming to provide a check on the popular will, the framers of the U.S. Constitution specified that U.S. senators should be elected by........

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