A history of voting rights in the United States

Among the essential elements of modern-day liberal democracy is political equality, including the equal right to register to vote, to vote, to have your vote counted along with all others, to seek public office and to hold public office if elected.

In the early years of our republic political equality was more of a theory than a reality but with time and countless battles won and setbacks reversed political equality in our nation has become more of a reality. Time and space prevent me from providing a detailed narrative of the quest for political equality in our nation, but milestones deserve our attention.

We begin by noting that under the Articles of Confederation and early decades under the US Constitution, the right to vote and to seek public office was frequently limited to white male property owners 21 years and older and in some jurisdictions of the “right” religion. With some court nudging and political pressure states abandoned property ownership and religious qualifications but racial, sexual and age barriers required amending the US Constitution and US Congressional action for their removal.

Key Amendments include the 15th Amendment (1870) removing the racial barrier, 19th Amendment (1920) removing the sexual barrier and the 26th Amendment (1971) lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years.
Enforcement of the 15th Amendment failed in the former confederate states with the end of the reconstruction era in the mid-1870s.

Using intimidation and violence including lynchings, literacy tests, poll taxes and whites only primary clubs, the old White power structure of the South was successful in preventing Black citizens from registering to vote and voting.

It was not until the coming of the modern American civil right era in the 1960s that enforcement of the 15th Amendment in the South became a reality. Ratification of the 24th Amendment (1964) prohibiting poll taxes and Congressional approval of the 1965 Voter Rights Act and the 1993 National Voter Registration Act were critical in promoting political equally for low income and racial minorities.

Our nation was clearly on a good path in approaching political equally for all as we entered the new millennium. But the momentum was soon interrupted by the US Supreme Court and state legislative assemblies.

In 2010 the US Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United vs. FEC that money is speech and opened the door for unlimited corporate wealth to be injected into the electoral process, creating an imbalance in election influence favoring corporate interests.

Three years later in Shelby County vs Holder the Court gutted the core of the 1965 Voter Rights Act by holding that those states and counties with a past history of racial discrimination in voting rights no longer needed to clear election law changes through the US Department of Justice.

The majority of the Court mused that the time had passed to fear that states will practice racial voter discrimination. The Court’s reasoning soon proved to be unfounded as multiple states approved new state legislative and US Congressional district boundaries diluting low income and racial minority voter strength. States also closed voting sites in low-income minority neighborhoods, introduced new voter ID requirements, shortened the timeframe for early voting and eliminated the use of drop boxes for early voting.

And now the Trump MAGA forces promote more sophisticated partisan redistricting while plotting to federalize election security and to win Congressional approval of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE).

The Trump Administration now seeks control of state registered voter lists in the name of election process integrity. SAVE introduces new in-person and absentee voter identification requirements and a new proof of citizenship requirement for voter registration and re-registration.

SAVE is not supported by evidence of voter fraud or noncitizen voting in our nation. The motivation for SAVE is best understood as a partisan MAGA response to the unproven and discounted claim of the pretend monarch that he was denied the majority popular vote in 2016 and election victory in 2020 because of millions of noncitizens voting in the presidential election of those years.
SAVE warrants more analysis than I can offer here so we will leave that analysis for the future.

The current partisan challenge to the progress made in pursuance of political equality in our nation is just one of many threats to our system of modern liberal democracy.

The recent nationwide No Kings protests involving 9 million or more Americans is evidence that “We the People” have awakened to the multiple threats our democracy is facing and “We the People” are prepared to reverse the current backsliding of our democracy.