If America is the world’s leading democracy, why doesn’t it act like one? If America is the world’s leading democracy, why does it make it so difficult for some of its citizens to vote?

As Barack Obama said last year: “We’re the only advanced democracy that deliberately discourages people from voting.” Few people outside America – and many who live here – are aware of how US states explicitly suppress the votes of people of color, students and poorer communities.

Our year-long series The Fight to Vote will draw national and international attention to voter suppression, and will put voting rights at the very heart of the Guardian’s 2020 election coverage. After all, what’s the point of covering an election if so many people are prevented from participating in it? Strict voter ID laws, poll closures and voter purges are all techniques used by states to deter, discourage or deny certain communities from casting their vote. And these are states with a terrible history of voting discrimination.

This voter disenfranchisement is not done by accident, but by design.

America has an inglorious history of a white, male establishment trying to restrict access to voting as a way of preserving its power base.

It’s still happening.

Over the past six years, since significant changes were made to the Voting Rights Act, a vanguard civil rights-era law that protected access to the ballot box, it has become more and more difficult for US citizens in certain states to exercise their democratic right. Those states are overwhelmingly run by Republicans. As a result, many communities are forced to engage in a fight simply to have this democratic right respected – a fight to vote.

You don’t have to take our word for it. Here’s what New York University’s Brennan Center, the foremost non-partisan organization devoted to voting rights, said earlier this year: “Over the last 20 years, states have put barriers in front of the ballot box – imposing strict voter ID laws, cutting voting times, restricting registration, and purging voter rolls. These efforts, which received a boost when the supreme court weakened the Voting Rights Act in 2013, have kept significant numbers of eligible voters from the polls, hitting all Americans, but placing special burdens on racial minorities, poor people, and young and old voters.”

This is why America performs so poorly in international rankings of “electoral integrity”:

The Guardian will team up with not-for profit news organizations across the country, work with institutions such as the Brennan Center, and will also be guided by Carole Anderson as our editorial adviser. Anderson wrote last year’s seminal One Person No Vote. Writing for us earlier this year, Anderson noted: “In 2016, pummeled by voter suppression in more than 30 states, the black voter turnout plummeted by seven percentage points. For the GOP, that was an effective kill rate. For America, it was a lethal assault on democracy.”

We will use our global platform to highlight voting suppression as a central issue to readers around the world.

In 1957 Martin Luther King addressed this assault on democracy when he delivered his famous “Give Us the Ballot” speech in Washington DC.

That ballot is still being denied to many Americans. If America wishes to be seen as the world’s leading democracy, it should stop restricting the most fundamental of democratic rights.