POLS 025. Ballots & Barriers: Voting Rights in America (AP)

This class examines the history of and contemporary challenges to voting rights in America. The course will begin by exploring how historical developments, including Reconstruction and Jim Crow, the suffragette movement, as well as the Civil Rights movement, have shaped who has access to voting rights. The majority of the course, however, will focus on contemporary issues, including state electoral reforms, felon disenfranchisement, and recent changes in voting laws, and the impact that these developments have had on the American electorate. Through analysis and discussion of both legal cases and cutting-edge social science research, students will gain a deeper understanding of the complex factors that have shaped, and continue to shape, voting rights in the United States.
Social Sciences.
1 credit.
Eligible for PPE.
Spring 2026. Schwarz.
Catalog chapter: Political Science
Department website: swarthmore.edu/political-science

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