Origins, Development, and Issues of the Right to Vote

Origins, Development, and Issues of the Right to Vote

Introduction

One of the most critical ways that individuals can influence governmental decision-making is through voting. Voting is a formal expression of preference for a candidate for office or for a proposed resolution of an issue. Voting generally takes place in the context of a large-scale national or regional election. However, local and small-scale community elections can be just as critical to individual participation in government. Article II of the US Constitution states that the right of citizens, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age, sex, religion, race, or previous condition of servitude. Also, the Congress has been provided power with the Constitution to enforce the article by appropriate legislation. The right to vote in the United States has gone through a lot of development and changes since the 19th Century to the present day to be able to incorporate various population groups in the society. However, just like in the 19th Century, voting rights in the United States are still contentious with States trying to limit voting with varying degrees of success.

Origins, Development, and Issues of the Right to Vote

Challenges to voting rights in the United States are hardly a 21st-century invention. Entrenched groups have long tried to keep the vote out of the hands of the less powerful. America began its great democratic experiment in the late 1700s by granting the right to vote to a narrow subset of society, white male landowners. Despite their belief in the virtues of democracy, the founders of the United States accepted and endorsed severe limits on voting. For decades, state legislatures generally restricted voting to white males who owned property. Some states also employed religious tests to ensure that only Christian men could vote. During the early part of the 19th century, state legislatures began to limit the property requirement for voting. Later, during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which ensured that people could not be denied the right to vote because of their race. The amendment was ratified by the states in 1870. However, many states, particularly in the South, used a range of barriers, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, to deliberately reduce voting among African American men. Early in the 20th century, women still were only able to vote in a handful of states. After decades of organizing and activism, women nationwide won the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. In March 1965, activists organized protest marches from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery to spotlight the issue of black voting rights. The first march was brutally attacked by police and others on a day that came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.” Inspired by voting rights marches in Alabama in spring 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act signed by President Lyndon Johnson in the presence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and other icons of the civil rights movement at his side. In addition to barring many of the policies and practices that states had been using to limit voting among African Americans and other targeted groups, the Voting Rights Act included provisions that required states and local jurisdictions with a historical pattern of suppressing voting rights based on race to submit changes in their election laws to the U.S. Justice Department for approval.

The Fight for the Right to Vote by Different Groups

Women and the Fight for the Right to Vote

In the middle of the 19th century, most Americans, including most women, accepted the idea of “separate spheres” for males and females. Men worked and ran the government. Women stayed home and cared for the family. This notion was based on the widely held assumption that women were by nature delicate, childlike, emotional, and mentally inferior to men. The Seneca Falls Convection was the first movement to advocate for the right of women to vote in USA. Seneca Falls was the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, along with Lucretia Mott, conceived and directed the convention. At the 1848 convention Stanton read the “Declaration of Sentiments,” a statement of grievances and demands patterned closely after the Declaration of Independence. The ninth resolution demanded the right to vote, which subjected the Seneca Falls Convention to subsequent ridicule and caused many backers of women’s rights to withdraw their support. It nonetheless served as the cornerstone of the woman suffrage movement that culminated in passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. One of the main leaders of the women’s suffrage movement was Susan B. Anthony. However, the Civil War interrupted action to secure the vote for women. In 1869, Anthony and Stanton organized the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) to work for a federal constitutional amendment, guaranteeing all American women the right to vote. Suffragists’ ongoing acts of civil disobedience, their extensive and strategic lobbying of Congress and the president, and women’s wartime contributions led to President Woodrow Wilson’s endorsement of the Nineteenth Amendment and its passage in the House of Representatives in January 1918. Persistence of women in their fight for the right to vote finally led to the amendment being added to the US Constitution on August 26, 1920 finally allowing women to vote.

African Americans Fight for Right to Vote

A terrible and bloody Civil War freed enslaved Americans. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1868) granted African Americans the rights of citizenship. However, this did not always translate into the ability to vote. Black voters were systematically turned away from state polling places. To combat this problem, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. Yet states still found ways to circumvent the Constitution and prevent blacks from voting. Poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud and intimidation all turned African Americans away from the polls. Until the Supreme Court struck it down in 1915, many states used the “grandfather clause” to keep descendents of slaves out of elections. The clause said you could not vote unless your grandfather had voted, an impossibility for most people whose ancestors were slaves. Many brave and impassioned Americans protested, marched, were arrested and even died working toward voting equality. In 1963 and 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. brought hundreds of black people to the courthouse in Selma, Alabama to register. When they were turned away, Dr. King organized and led protests that finally turned the tide of American political opinion. In 1964 the Twenty-fourth Amendment prohibited the use of poll taxes. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act directed the Attorney General to enforce the right to vote for African Americans. The 1965 Voting Rights Act created a significant change in the status of African Americans throughout the South. The Voting Rights Act prohibited the states from using literacy tests and other methods of excluding African Americans from voting. Prior to this, only an estimated twenty-three percent of voting-age blacks were registered nationally, but by 1969 the number had jumped to sixty-one percent.

Native Americans Fight for the Right to Vote

Native Americans could not be U.S. citizens when the country ratified its Constitution in 1788, and would not win the right to be for 136 years. When African Americans won citizenship with the 14th Amendment in 1868, the government specifically interpreted the law so it did not apply to Native Americans. In 1924, Native people won the right to full citizenship when President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, also known as the Snyder Act. In any case, Congress did not give Native Americans voting rights at that time either. The Constitution gave states the right to determine voting rights. Native Americans were only able to win the right to vote by fighting for it state by state. Court victories against voting restrictions throughout the 1940s and 1950s helped more indigenous citizens to exercise their rights. In the 1950s, the Indian vote was significant in several Western states. In the 1956 election, both parties in Arizona issued a statement on their Indian policy, and in 1964 President Johnson’s campaign made a point of reaching out to Indian voters. More significant, however, was the Voting Rights Act, and the 1970 and 1975 amendments that strengthened the act. The Voting Rights Act outlawed any practices that “deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color” and established federal oversight of elections in areas where discrimination had historically been practiced.

The Impact of Right to Vote Today

Voting is a basic process that keeps a nation’s governmental system working. It enables the citizens to choose their own government. It also allows the people to choose their representatives in the government. The purpose of every government is to develop and implement various policies for the benefit of its citizens. Voting also enables the person with the right to question the government about issues and clarifications. Voting is the way to express the opinion of a citizen in a democratic nation. Right to vote energizes social awareness since it empowers political cooperation. The citizens can follow the progress of the political representatives and the legislature. This consistent process enables the general population to settle on educated choices about whom to vote in favor of in the following term. Also, the legislature cannot generally act arbitrarily when the entire nation is observing. Every adult is given the right to vote, irrespective of sex, class, occupation, and so forth. This is representative of uniformity and congruity. It is a fundamental right in which all citizens get an opportunity to choose who represents them. Every party that is competing in any elections announces and establishes various benefits and social reforms for their people. Some of these political parties might be deceiving with their initial reforms, but can have the intention of corruption. It is the responsibility and skills of citizen that decides which government is elected. It is the right, benefit and obligation to vote as a citizen of a nation and an individual from the society. Individuals may figure their vote does not make a difference, but rather votes can shape remote monetary and social arrangements.

While the word “crisis” is so overused that we have become inured to it, there is no better word for the immense political dysfunction that the United States now faces. This is reflected not only in the historically low levels of public approval for Congress and the president, but also a demonstrable loss of confidence in democracy itself. More and more Americans, especially millennials, believe that democracy is a “bad” or “very bad” way of running the country. Accompanying this loss of faith in democratic institutions is an alarming decline in the percentage of people who believe that it is essential to live in a democracy. While the United States is not alone in this respect, the shift in public opinion here is especially dramatic, and especially troubling, given America’s historic leadership role among democratic countries. One might fairly ask what all of these problems have to do with the right to vote. Americans have the freedom to choose their leaders and engage on the issues that they care about. That means Americans can build power in their communities and create real change. The right to vote gives the American people that power. But whether that right is protected varies from state to state. Yes, even today, some states have laws that encourage voters to participate and make their voices heard, while others have laws that confuse and block voters, which lowers turnout and people’s impact. Such laws that take such power from the people is the main reason why most people have lost faith in democracy.

Reflection of My Own Value and Americans Value System

The idea that all eligible citizens should have an equal vote is deeply engrained in the American consciousness. Yet the very meaning of this ideal is fiercely contested. Recent and ongoing voting controversies demonstrate how partisan polarization has changed the public debate over voting rights. Broadly speaking, contemporary voting rights issues may be divided into two broad categories. The first is vote denial, which concerns burdens that some people face when trying to participate in the electoral process. The other is vote dilution, which concerns practices that are used to weaken the voting strength of an identifiable group, often defined by race or party affiliation. Based on the knowledge that I have on the right to vote, the first generation of voting rights legislation and litigation focused on vote denial, especially in the 1960s. Since the contested 2000 election, we have seen renewed attention to alleged burdens on voting, which I term as “the new vote denial.” The most conspicuous example is strict voter ID. A handful of states have enacted laws requiring voters to present government-issued photo identification, like a driver’s license, to have their votes counted. I believe that such political debates over such laws has a distinctly partisan character.

When voter ID and other burdens on voting are enacted into state law, they are frequently challenged in court. The Supreme Court has adopted a balancing test for assessing claims that such laws violate the constitutional right to vote. In Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008), a divided Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s law requiring most voters to present a photo ID. Since Crawford, there have been many cases challenging voter ID laws and other restrictions on voting. Some have survived, while others have been struck down. In Veasey v. Abbott (2016), for example, the Fifth Circuit found that a Texas voter ID law discriminated against minority voters, in violation of the Voting Rights Act. On the other hand, in Frank v. Walker (2014), the Seventh Circuit upheld Wisconsin’s voter ID law. Yet, another court struck down an omnibus voting law in North Carolina that included not just voter ID but also restrictions on early voting, same-day registration, and the counting of provisional ballots. The different outcomes in these cases may partly be explained by the strength of the evidence presented in court and the value system that Americans hold. In southern states with a checkered racial history, it is generally easier to prove purposeful discrimination. There is no easy way around this problem. Judges are human, after all and each one of them has their values that they prioritize. As long as they are called on to weigh the burdens of a law against its benefits, reasonable minds will often differ on what the result should be. Often judges’ perceptions of the harms and benefits flowing from voting laws tend to track their values and ideological views. The battles outside the courtroom mirror those within it and, if anything, are even more intense. An ongoing example is the commission created by President Donald Trump to investigate electoral integrity. Led by Vice President Pence and Kansas’s controversial Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the commission includes some of the staunchest advocates of voting restrictions but no credible voting rights advocates. This has alarmed many observers, who understandably fear that the commission will exaggerate the extent of voting fraud in the United States in an effort to justify new barriers to participation.

Conclusion

It is evident that voting rights is still contentious with many states still trying to limit it. The issue is not a new thing as it has been happening in the American history. Many groups such as women, African Americans, and Native Americans have fought for their right to vote in the American Civil Rights history. Although things have changed and improved, it is still evident that the right to vote is still being abused calling for stringer measures to ensure that the right is protected.