Tens of millions of voters in the United States will decide the country's next president on November 5. More than half of American states have implemented new voting restrictions. Proponents say it will help weed out election fraud, but critics claim it amounts to voter suppression. Toni Waterman is in Texas, one of the hardest states to register and cast a ballot, to see what impact these new rules may have.

Before the American Civil War when the North and South battled over slavery and states' rights, this was the Alta Vista Plantation where hundreds of enslaved people lived, worked and died. At least one pair of shackles have been found in the Plantation's cemetery.

TONI: "Do you know how many people are buried in the cemetery?"

BEQUITA: "Unfortunately, we do not because there are more unmarked graves than they are marked."

Bequita Pegram is a history professor at Prairie View A&M University, Texas' first public college for Black students. It was established on the Alta Vista Plantation in 1876, more than a decade after the civil war ended.

BEQUITA PEGRAM History Professor, Prairie View A&M University "When we look at the history of Prairie View, starting with enslaved people, and now you look at an institution that's producing doctors, lawyers, educators, it's something to be proud of."

But a right of passage for many of the black students here has been the long fight with the mostly white county the school is located in over access to the ballot box. Even, after the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting.

In the '70s, students were barred from voting over residency requirements, a practice the Supreme Court later ruled was unconstitutional. In the early 90s, 19 students were indicted on allegations of illegal voting. The case was later dropped. 

More recently in 2018, students sued after county officials said there would be only three days of early voting on campus, while other whiter, parts of the county had 12 days. Officials denied they were suppressing the vote and said both political parties agreed to the plan.

"For the first time ever, while I was there, I felt like my vote was under attack."

Nathan Alexander III was a main organizer of the protests. He's now studying civil rights law at the University of Texas Austin.

NATHAN ALEXANDER III Former Prairie View Student "We cannot afford to sit out in the election, just because of the people who came before us and what they endured to ensure that my vote would be just as equal to any, anyone else."

TONI "Did you feel like it was intentional?"

NATHAN "Without a doubt, without a doubt."

The courts didn't agree, ruling that Waller County did not discriminate against students when it reduced early voting days. This year, there is no early voting on campus. Students will have to go to this community center a mile away. Voting in America has changed significantly in the past decade and not just because of the global pandemic.

TONI WATERMAN Washington DC "In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act, which had required states with a history of racial discrimination in voting to 'pre-clear' any changes to their election laws with the federal government. It applied mostly to states in the south like Texas."

JAMES GARDNER Bridget and Thomas Black SUNY Distinguished Professor of Law University at Buffalo School of Law "A green light has been given by the Supreme Court to state legislatures to attempt to game the system. What we're seeing now is attempts by state legislatures to find some weak point that they can exploit, which will put a thumb on the scale to advantage the party that they want to advantage. And that is a terrible result for democracy."

According to the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, in the years since the Supreme Court ruling, at least 31 states have enacted 114 new restrictive voting laws, many of them focused on mail in and early voting, and ID requirements. The research on the impact of these new regulations is still limited with some studies suggesting minimal effects on turnout.

JAMES GARDNER Bridget and Thomas Black SUNY Distinguished Professor of Law University at Buffalo School of Law "So, for example, photo ID laws. There was just a huge howl of protest against these when they came out. And subsequent research has seemed to suggest that the impact of these laws is really fairly trivial."

But there are examples. Here in Texas, new ID requirements for mail-in voting led to more than 24,000 ballots being thrown out during the 2022 midterm primaries. The Brennan Center says, Latino, Asian and black voters were impacted at higher rates than white voters. Republicans though see these new regulations as essential to protecting the integrity of American elections.

KRIS: "Three different names were mailed to this address."

TONI: "And do these people live at this address?"

KRIS: "They do not."

Kris Coons and Kyle Sinclair run the Bexar County Republican Party. While they believe Donald Trump lost in 2020, they're concerned about the potential for fraud this time around, especially after record high illegal migrant crossings earlier in the year. And after Democratic officials in their county used taxpayer money to hire an outside company, which they say is extremely liberal, to mail out voter registration forms, whether they've been requested or not.

KYLE SINCLAIR Bexar County GOP Vice Chair "They're going to send it to illegal people. They're going to send to people that have no right to register, such as felons. So yeah, that is a major concern with what is going on in this county. Let's have a fair, free election and make it harder to cheat and easier to vote."

TONI: "The data shows that there is not widespread fraud."

KYLE: "I think three is enough. One's enough. Four is enough. I don't think it's harder to vote. It's not harder to register."

New data from the Center for Election Innovation and Research shows that, despite concerns of voter suppression, at a national level, it's actually gotten easier to vote since 2000 with most states offering early and mail in voting.

DAVID BECKER Executive Director and Founder Center for Election Innovation and Research "From the perspective of voters, I don't think they're going to see a lot of impact from the kind of intense Partisan infighting that has been happening and some legislatures capitulating to the disinformation post 2020 election. I think actually, for all of the talk, almost every voter is going to find a safe and convenient experience."

Back at Prairie View, volunteers like Denise Maddox aren't willing to risk it. They're here almost every day registering students to vote. She believes voter suppression has become far more nuanced than new laws or old tactics, pointing to a drop off in students registering and voting in recent years.

DENISE MADDOX Volunteer "Your circumstances will dictate your choices. If you manipulate a person's circumstances in such a way that they have no knowledge, no forethought, no history, no access then that's still voter suppression."

The tug-of-war over access to the ballot box – still a mainstay of American elections, long after everyone was granted the right to vote. Toni Waterman, CGTN, Texas.