Women gained the right to vote in 1920 by the 19th Amendment, although many states permitted women to vote before. This made the voting population almost double. Women vote in slightly higher percentages than men, but this has never influenced any election directly. Women also tend to vote Democrat, and so there is a gender gap. African Americans gained the right to vote by the 15th Amendment in 1870, but in the South especially, white people in power used loopholes to make it so that African Americans were not able to vote. They used literacy tests and poll taxes, and there was also much violence against African Americans in the South. It wasn’t until the Civil Rights movement that eventually created the 24th Amendment, banning poll taxes,