We urge our readers to turn out to vote on Tuesday, March 3.

That’s Super Tuesday, when voters in Virginia and 13 other states will cast ballots in the Democratic presidential primary election.

Voting in this election will guide Virginia’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention on who should become the Democratic nominee to run for president in November.

The last two televised presidential debates have been bruisers, with Democratic contenders beating each other up over a variety of consequential and not-so-consequential issues.

We believe the candidates — and most importantly, the voters — should keep their eyes on the prize: To defeat President Trump in November.

Voters must put an end to his reign of lunacy that has jeopardized our national security and our very democracy as this Republican continues to place his personal interests over those of the nation. He continues to lie on any range of subjects, to cozy up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and to ignore U.S. intelligence warnings of Russian interference in the 2020 presidential elections like they did in the 2016 election to help President Trump get into office.

President Trump’s policies and practices have put children into cages on the U.S. border; pardoned or exonerated numerous corrupt politicians and business people federally convicted of fraud and/or bribery; cut taxes to help the super rich become even more wealthy, while pushing policy changes that will cut people from food stamps, health care programs, including Medicare and Obamacare, and other social safety net programs; rolled back environmental protections while opening unspoiled areas to oil interests for drilling; packed the nation’s federal courts with conservatives ready to reverse the legal progress of the last 50 years on issues like a woman’s right to choose an abortion; and created the potential for further damaging communities of color by exacerbating the school-to-prison pipeline.

We ask Virginia voters to go to the polls and choose the Democratic candidate who they believe will put the brakes on President Trump and set this nation back on a correct and more normal course.

It is imperative that we un-Trump America.

For those who cannot get to the polls on Tuesday, this Saturday, Feb. 29, is the last day for in-person absentee voting.

For Richmond residents, the city Voter Registrar’s Office on the first floor of City Hall, 900 E. Broad St., will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday for people to cast ballots. Officials ask that the public use the 9th Street entrance.

In Henrico, registered voters can cast ballots at two locations from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday — the Dabbs House Government Complex in the East End at 3830 E. Nine Mile Road, and in the West End at the Henrico Government Complex at 4305 E. Parham Road.

In Chesterfield, voters can cast ballots at the Chesterfield Voter Registrar’s Office at 9848 Lori Road from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday.

The Hanover County Voter Registrar’s Office will be open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday for in-person absentee voting. The office is located in the Wickham Building near the courthouse at 7497 County Complex Road.

We remind our readers of just how important voting is and of Virginia’s sordid history keeping African-Americans from the ballot box.

Following the Civil War and emancipation, African-American adult men voted in Virginia beginning in 1867, with their impact felt with the election of African-Americans to the General Assembly in 1869.

But that power didn’t last long as white men sought to curb black political power in Virginia. The 1901-02 Virginia Constitutional Convention instituted two laws designed to disenfranchise African-Americans and circumvent the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1870, which guaranteed voting rights to black men. Those two laws: Voters had to prove to local election officials their “understanding” of the state Constitution, and they had to pay an annual poll tax of $1.50 in order to vote.

According to an exhibit at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, within 90 days of imposition of the laws, more than 125,000 of Virginia’s 147,000 African-American voters had been stricken from the rolls.

After the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in August 1920 giving women the right to vote, 2,410 African-American women in Virginia registered to vote in the Nov. 2, 1920, presidential election despite the literacy and poll tax requirements.

Republican Warren G. Harding, who was outspoken on civil rights for African-Americans, won that election.

According to the New York Times, in his first address to Congress, President Harding called for an anti-lynching law. He later traveled to the Deep South to call for equal political and economic rights for black people in a speech in Birmingham, Ala.

“Whether you like it or not,” he told white audience members, “unless our democracy is a lie, you must stand for that equality.”

Like under former President Obama, a conservative Congress rebuffed President Harding in his efforts. His anti-lynching law was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, but not the U.S. Senate. And he wasn’t able to reverse the segregation of federal departments promulgated by his predecessor, Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, a native Virginian.

(On Wednesday, the House passed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act. The Senate passed a version of the bill last year. Once the two are reconciled, the legislation will go to the Oval Office for President Trump’s signature. We will see what he will do.)

It wasn’t until the 1960s that the federal government outlawed many of the methods used to disenfranchise black voters in Virginia and across the South.

In January 1964, the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified guaranteeing that the right to vote in any federal election “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.”

And in August 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act guaranteeing that no person shall be denied the right to vote based on race. The act sought to overcome the barriers erected by state and local governments that prevented African-Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution’s 15th Amendment.

Virginia’s voter rolls swelled with African-Americans registering to vote after the 1965 Voting Rights Act, with historic gains in the number of elected black office holders in the years following.

But efforts to abridge black voting rights continue through today, with President Trump’s Department of Justice ignoring many of the complaints about racial discrimination impacting voting. Some of the same methods used at the turn of the 20th century to disenfranchise African-Americans are used today, including making polling places inaccessible to black and brown communities, running out of ballots and creating long lines to dissuade people from voting.

We believe that voting is critical to the progress of African-Americans in this nation, and even more crucial now for the direction of our nation.

Your vote is your voice. Use it on Tuesday, March 3 — and in November.