Although restricting formal voting rights—voter suppression—is not uncommon in democracies, its incidence and form vary widely.Intuitively, when competing elites believe that the benefits of reducing voting by opponents outweigh the costs of voter suppression, it ismore likely to occur. Internal political and state capacity and external actors, however, influence the form that voter suppression takes.When elites competing for office lack the ability to enact laws restricting voting due to limited internal capacity, or external actors are able tolimit the ability of governments to use laws to suppress voting, suppression is likely to be ad hoc, decentralized, and potentially violent. Aspolitical and state capacity increase and external constraints decrease, voter suppression will shift from decentralized and potentially violentto centralized and mostly non-violent. We illustrate our arguments by analyzing the transition from decentralized, violent voter suppressionthrough the use of lynchings (and associated violence) to the centralized, less violent suppression of black voting in the post-ReconstructionSouth. We also place the most recent wave of U.S. state voter suppression laws into broader context using our theoretical framework.
