African Americans got the right to vote in the US in 1870.

But a whole state-level legislative architecture meant that suffrage wasn't accessible nationwide till the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Modern voter registration laws, which are gathering pace today, are largely targeted at keeping minority voters from exercising their democratic rights.

Great timeline here: https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2021/05/politics/black-v...

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AnthonyMouse 4 days ago | parent [-]

If you want to talk about whether something exists in practice rather than on paper then I have some news for you about Russia.

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specproc 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah, exactly. I'm saying the UK and America have democracies of equal quality to and poorer pedigree than Russia.

Edit for clarity.

	▲	AnthonyMouse 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		The US has generally had elections in which whether you could run did not depend on your ideology or opposition to the current administration, and the candidate who got the most votes would get into office. Russia, not so much.