Contrary to popular imagery, a revolution rarely starts with a violent sudden overthrow. No, many of the dangerous attacks on freedoms are slow-moving bloodless coups. Exactly like the measured and poisonous concerted campaign to roll back voting laws and election processes.

A campaign advanced last week when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ohio’s efforts to purge voters from the voting rolls. Ohio fought for the right to purge those who didn’t respond to notices confirming their addresses, and who skipped several election cycles. In a 5-4 decision, the high court upheld Ohio’s specious local law, even though the federal 1993 National Voter Registration Act specifically forbids any state from removing names from the polls for “failure to vote.” The majority said Ohio’s law wasn’t about failure to vote, but about failure to respond. However you describe it, the impact is the same — mostly affecting minorities and veterans, low income and disabled people.

I heard the news about the decision and immediately felt cold fear. For me a lifelong Super voter, there are few greater injustices than taking away the right to vote. I know the blood-stained sacrifice so many made to guarantee my right to vote. And I can’t stop thinking about the thousands of Ohioans who will show up at the polls in November and be turned away. More, I am alarmed that the targeted movement to disenfranchise certain voter groups can now use legal precedent to support its scorched earth campaign to purge millions more voters.

Long before the Russians decided to hack into the 2016 election, state legislatures began passing laws and adopting election policies targeting voting rights. President Barack Obama was ushered into office in 2008 by voters who cast ballots on the weekends, or during early voting periods. Back then most polling places were easily accessible by public transportation and open for extended hours to accommodate working people.

But, in the last few years, Republican-led legislatures have pushed through laws that eliminate weekend and early voting and required photo IDs. Polling places have been closed, and others moved to remote locations. Most egregious — states like North Carolina, Florida, and Wisconsin where voter suppression efforts dramatically lowered voter turnout.

The President’s now-disbanded phony voter fraud commission, the Supreme Court’s prior ruling striking down part of the Voting Rights Act, and threats designed to keep legal immigrants away add up to fundamental change to Americans’ rights at the election booth and beyond. If that’s not a revolution I don’t know what is.

In his chilling book, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” author and Yale historian Timothy Snyder warns that modern tyranny gains a foothold when we are blinded by thinking, “this is not a big deal, or the institutions will protect us, or this can’t happen here.” Until it does.