Had All In: The Fight for Democracy still been in production when the Trump administration announced its attempts to defund the postal service, it would have been included here. What happened last month was a barely subtle attempt at voter suppression, only this time aimed at more than just the minority vote. Yet this tactic has long been an intrinsic part of American history, used to disenfranchise and intimidate citizens from exercising their most basic democratic rights. Such a contradiction to the Constitution’s “We the People” declaration has now been pushed to the brink with the 2020 election on the horizon, meaning this film could not have come at a better time.

In theory, basic voting rights should be a nonpartisan issue. Yet this documentary peels back the history behind its inaccessibility since the United States’ creation, when only white male landowners had the legal right to vote. At the end of the 18th century, they made up a mere six percent of the country, leaving women, Native Americans, and especially African Americans devoid of political power. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments created in wake of the Civil War were meant to remedy that, creating a definition of U.S. citizenship whose benefits included Black American men voting for the first time and even holding office in Congress. However, the South squashed those gains as quickly as they could with Jim Crow laws to ensure that racial discrimination survived in some legal form.

The central theme of All In is how blatantly obvious these tactics were, operating in plain sight as an extension of white fear and retribution. Poll taxes made civilians choose between their livelihood and voting rights, while so-called literary tests were crafted with the same unwinnable purpose as Star Trek’s Kobayashi Maru exercise.

Televised footage of the police violence during 1965’s Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, finally pushed the America public over the edge to help President Lyndon Johnson pass the Voting Rights Act, but only after Black activists put their bodies on the line to expose the system’s naked inequality. Even then the white backlash would persist, with Barack Obama’s 2008 electoral victory turning his new, untapped, and diverse coalition into the latest catalyst to make suppression tactics even more brazen.

All In feels like an unintentional, but welcome, follow up to Slay the Dragon, a similar documentary released earlier this year about the rise of modern gerrymandering and its consequences. Its larger story is mirrored by interviews with Stacey Abrams, whose 2018 Georgia gubernatorial campaign came within 50,000-plus votes of beating Republican nominee Brian Kemp. (She’s also one of the film’s producers.)

Of course, the election was also plagued by its own forms of blatant voter suppression. Kemp’s refusal to step away from his then-current position of election supervisor as Georgia’s secretary of state meant that he was simultaneously running for office while closing down polling places to disenfranchise the African American vote. In any other democracy, this would be labeled a serious conflict of interest. In the United States, it’s just another chapter in the history books.

Abrams’s commitment to voting rights is framed as equal parts campaign issue and personal conviction. She was raised by parents who stressed the importance of casting a ballot, and voting rights drove Abrams’s college activism. She even gave a speech at the March on Washington’s 30th anniversary. Her activism would eventually come full circle when the late John Lewis campaigned for her in 2018. She’s the star of the show, but directors Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés also interview other legal figures to flesh out voting suppression’s historical consequences, ranging from former Attorney General Eric Holder to Professor Carol Anderson.

Both stress that the cycle of disenfranchisement is alive, specifically in wake of the 2013 Shelby v. Holder Supreme Court decision. By gutting the Voting Rights Act so severely, the high court gave Republican-led states and governors the greenlight to push voter ID laws and tactics that, in practice, are nothing more than a modernized version of Jim Crow.

It wouldn’t be illogical to say all these strategies helped Donald Trump win in 2016 by a few thousand votes. That they could work again this November is unclear but still terrifying to consider so long as people accept and cave to the voting system’s deliberate complexities. In this sense, All In: The Fight for Democracy’s title represents a mantra like “We the People,” but one that recognizes that the ballot box’s integrity in giving ordinary citizens true power. At this particular moment in history, there’s too much on the line for us to pretend that our votes don’t matter.