Voting Rights in United States
Introduction to Voting Rights
Native-born or naturalized (foreign-born) U.S. citizens over the age of 18 possess the right to vote. Citizens can lose their right to vote. All states prohibit felons (people convicted of serious crimes) from voting during their imprisonment or parole, and 13 states bar felons from voting for life. However, convicted felons who have regained their right to vote cannot be denied the right to vote if they move to any of those 13 states.
During the early years of the nation’s history, legislatures in the United States generally restricted the right to vote to white males over the age of 21. In addition, many states also limited voting rights to those who owned property or paid more than a specified annual tax. State governments began to rescind property and tax requirements during the 1820s and 1830s. By the end of the Civil War in 1865, the majority of these requirements had disappeared, at least as they affected voting by white males. Women did not fully gain the right to vote in the United States until the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1920.
At the time of the Civil War, black males had won the right to vote in most Northern states. The 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1870, secured their right to vote throughout the nation. Despite the 15th Amendment, the states of the former Confederacy effectively rescinded the voting rights of blacks in the 1880s. During this period, the Southern states created what was called the Jim Crow system of racial segregation. As part of this system, a variety of devices, such as poll taxes, literacy tests, and property qualifications, prevented virtually all blacks from voting. During the 1950s and 1960s, the civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders, demanded the restoration of black voting rights. Enactment of the 1965 federal Voting Rights Act accomplished this goal. This law provided for the U.S. Department of Justice to oversee registration of voters in states with histories of discrimination against minority citizens.
Women won the right to vote in 1920, through ratification of the 19th Amendment. This amendment resulted primarily from the activities of the women’s voting rights, or suffrage, movement led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Carrie Chapman Catt. The suffragists held rallies, demonstrations, and protest marches for nearly a half-century before achieving their goal. The most recent expansion of voting rights in the United States took place in 1971, with the ratification of the 26th Amendment. This amendment lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.” (1)
Election: Voting Rights
15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Voting Rights (1870)
Passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870, the 15th amendment granted African American men the right to vote.
To former abolitionists and to the Radical Republicans in Congress who fashioned Reconstruction after the Civil War, the 15th amendment, enacted in 1870, appeared to signify the fulfillment of all promises to African Americans. Set free by the 13th amendment, with citizenship guaranteed by the 14th amendment, black males were given the vote by the 15th amendment. From that point on, the freedmen were generally expected to fend for themselves. In retrospect, it can be seen that the 15th amendment was in reality only the beginning of a struggle for equality that would continue for more than a century before African Americans could begin to participate fully in American public and civic life.
African Americans exercised the franchise and held office in many Southern states through the 1880s, but in the early 1890s, steps were taken to ensure subsequent “white supremacy.” Literacy tests for the vote, “grandfather clauses” excluding from the franchise all whose ancestors had not voted in the 1860s, and other devices to disenfranchise African Americans were written into the constitutions of former Confederate states. Social and economic segregation were added to black America’s loss of political power. In 1896 the Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson legalized “separate but equal” facilities for the races. For more than 50 years, the overwhelming majority of African American citizens were reduced to second-class citizenship under the “Jim Crow” segregation system. During that time, African Americans sought to secure their rights and improve their position through organizations such as National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Urban League and through the individual efforts of reformers like Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and A. Philip Randolph.
The most direct attack on the problem of African American disfranchisement came in 1965. Prompted by reports of continuing discriminatory voting practices in many Southern states, President Lyndon B. Johnson, himself a southerner, urged Congress on March 15, 1965, to pass legislation “which will make it impossible to thwart the 15th amendment.” He reminded Congress that “we cannot have government for all the people until we first make certain it is government of and by all the people.” The Voting Rights Act of 1965, extended in 1970, 1975, and 1982, abolished all remaining deterrents to exercising the franchise and authorized Federal supervision of voter registration where necessary.
(Information excerpted from Milestone Documents [Washington, DC: The National Archives and Records Administration, 1995] pp. 61-63.)
Source: The People’s Vote, National Archives of the United States.
Voting Rights Act and Shelby County v. Holder
By Margaret M. Russell. She is a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law.
The impact of the Supreme Court’s decision on the Voting Rights Act are immediate, long-term, and monumental (Shelby County v. Holder).
Of the multiple high-profile Supreme Court decisions issued in that week, the Shelby County case is surely the one with the most devastating long-term societal consequences. Although the affirmative action, adoption, and marriage equality rulings are broadly significant, Shelby County will go down in history as the case in which the Roberts Court put the Voting Rights Act on the chopping block and eviscerated it.
By invalidating Section 4, the Roberts majority stripped the Act of a core provision: the “coverage formula” applied to determine which voting jurisdictions were compelled under Section 5 to obtain advance approval (“preclearance”) from the Justice Department before changing their election practices. Without Section 4, the preclearance requirement of Section 5 is presently all but useless. Thus, within 24 hours of the Court’s decision, election officials in formerly “covered” states including Texas, Mississippi, Florida, and Georgia announced plans to institute changes such as voter ID requirements and the elimination of early voting.
Research shows that voter ID requirements and limited polling place access disproportionately affect racial minorities, disabled individuals, elders, and poor people. Before the Shelby County decision, these plans would have required review and approval by the Justice Department in light of the jurisdictions’ records of racial discrimination in voting. Thus, the effects of the decision are immediate and — without congressional intervention — will be long-term and monumental. As an example of the increasingly dominant Roberts Court paradigm of thinking about race, the majority opinion is equally damaging. In the 2007 Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, Chief Justice John Roberts penned a now-famous sentence: “The way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” This thought, however succinct and superficially catchy, reveals an ahistorical and distorted view of the role of the post-Civil War Amendments in eradicating racism. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent notes, the central question before the Court in Shelby was the power of Congress under the Fifteenth Amendment to enact (and reauthorize) the Voting Rights Act.
Chief Justice Roberts’ preference — shared most vociferously by Justice Antonin Scalia — was to supplant his view for that of Congress in the decision to reauthorize Section 4 of the Act in 2006. In other cases, the Chief Justice and Justice Scalia might regard such an approach as judicial overreaching and usurpation of constitutional authority. It is not only surprising but tragic to see that their chosen occasion for overturning a Congressional provision will result in the diminution of rights that the Voting Rights Act existed so long to protect.
Voting Rights
United States Constitution
According to the Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, about its article titled VOTING RIGHTS”The right to vote freely for the candidate of one’s choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government.” So spoke Chief Justice earl warren, on behalf of the Supreme Court, in reynolds v. sims
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Voting Rights
United States Constitution
According to the Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, about its article titled VOTING RIGHTS The 1980s began inauspiciously for supporters of minority voting rights when a plurality of the Supreme Court ruled in mobile v. bolden (1980) that the voting rights act prohibited only intentional racial discrimination. Yet two years later, civil rights forces, over the
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Voting Rights Act Background
Voting Rights (Civil Rights Law)
This section introduces, discusses and describes the basics of voting rights. Then, cross references and a brief overview about Civil Rights Lawin relation to voting rights is provided. Note that a list of bibliography resources and other aids appears at the end of this entry.
Resources
Notes and References
- Information about Voting Rights in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia
Guide to Voting Rights
In this Section
Voting Rights, Voter Participation, Election Redistricting, Electoral College (including Electoral College Selection, Counting the Votes, Electoral College Origins, Electoral College First Years, Electoral College History and the 12th Amendment, Disputed Elections of 1824 and 1876, Electoral College and the Influence of Political Parties, Winner-Take-All System, Debate Over the Electoral College and Electoral College Reform), Electorate Age and Electorate Constitutional Provisions.