It’s the cusp of his 90th birthday, but civil rights icon Ferguson Reid is still gearing up for the long haul.

“We have the races in 2015, 2017, and 2019 to get the majority,” he tells me, referring to the off-year elections for control of Virginia’s state government. “And this election will determine whether or not we’re able to get a House majority for 2021.”

The last round of voter restrictions came after the 2010 Republican wave, when new GOP majorities passed voter identification laws and slashed ballot access in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. Now, three months after the 2014 Republican wave, another class of state lawmakers are prepping another assault on voting rights under the same guise of “uniformity” and “ballot integrity.”

Headlines are telling a bleak story this election season, particularly for women of color. Fast food and home care workers—the vast majority of them minority women who are living in poverty—have been striking for a living wage.

'The real reason for the laws is to lower turnout, to hold onto power by keeping those who in opposition from exercising their solemn right.'

I’ve been registered to vote since 1948. But once Republicans passed the law, I was asked to prove I’m not an ‘illegal alien’. In October 2011, an article appeared in my local paper reporting that, in order to vote in the next election, everyone was going to need a state-issued identity card for the first time. At 85 years old, I didn’t have one, because I’m handicapped and so I never drove a car or needed an ID.