Democrats and the rest of the left have a somewhat bifurcated approach to the vote. During their Jim Crow regime in the South, Democrats specialized in retail vote suppression. When a potential black voter attempted to register that brave individual was met with literacy tests, poll taxes and other extra–constitutional roadblocks placed by a Democrat government between a minority and the voting booth.
And if that wasn’t enough for the black man to take the hint, there was always outright violence as a fallback position.