Voting is a basic right and it is fundamental in a democracy which today is established through the American Constitution and the state law. In the past years, people worked at every level to pass constitutional amendments and laws with an aim of expanding access to the vote on the basis of age, race, gender, ethnicity, disability, and other factors. The upper class in the society tried to deny the less privileged and less powerful people the right to vote. Although the United States started its democratic experiment in the late 1700s, the only people who were allowed to vote were a small group of the society which included the white male landowners. Although the barriers to voting rights decreased gradually in the following decades, some of the southern states continued creating laws and regulations that prevented many people from participating in elections.
Most American States enacted gender, religion, property, race, and tax requirements so that only a few people would exercise their voting rights. During the first presidential election in the United States in 1789, the people who exercised their voting rights were a few landowning white Protestant males (Bodenhom, 2014). The first state to do away with the landowning requirement for a person to be a voter was New Hampshire in 1792. However, it was until 1856 that the first state in America, North Carolina, removed the demand for white men to own property. Although the American Constitution dictated that officeholders should not be discriminated against based on their religion, several states went on to subject people to religious tests. Jews men were allowed to cast their vote in Maryland in 1828 and by 1860s most white males had voting rights in the United States. Although the voting rights were being expanded in some groups of the population, states started to enact laws that prevented Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants, and women from voting. New Jersey, for example, allowed all inhabitants to exercise their voting rights through the 1776 constitution and few women voted in 1797 state legislative election. However, in 1807, the legislature passed a law barring women from voting. In 1821, New York allowed the black voters to own property that effectively prevented them from voting by amending its constitution (Berman, 2015). Another example of limiting people from exercising their voting rights was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which prevented immigrants of Chinese descent from becoming citizens and hence barring them from voting.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Before the Civil War, the American constitution had specific provisions for protecting voting rights. The Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 which was passed by Congress permitted the former Confederate states to be allowed back into the Union on condition that they accepted the new state constitution that allowed all males to vote (Hayduk, 2004). On July 28th, 1868, the ratification of the 14th Amendment was done that conferred citizenship to all people who were bone or naturalized in America. Under the 14th Amendment, citizenship was also granted to slaves who were freed after the Civil War and guaranteed equal protection by the laws. The Amendment abolished slavery and civil rights to Black Americans in the United States. Section 1’s clause stated that no American State shall enforce a law that abridges the immunities and privileges of citizens of the U.S. the clause protected the civil and legal rights including the Voting Rights. During the ratification process, President Johnson made it clear that he was opposed to the 14th Amendment. His argument was that they would take away the privileges the white men had access to. The legislature of New Jersey and Ohio withdrew their approvals and President Johnson encouraged the Southern legislators to reject the amendment (Cascio & Washington, 2014). However, the Republican Congress got in control of Reconstruction and dictated that all states that were formerly in rebellion were to be under the direct military rule if they did not approve the 14th Amendment. They were of the view that race or economic status of a person had nothing to do with a person making the right decision.
The voting rights for African American men were fulfilled when the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870. The Amendment guaranteed the right to vote to every man regardless of color, race, and religion (Berman, 2015). However, the states on the South used intimidation and various methods like literacy tests and poll taxes to suppress their rights to vote as provided in the 15th Amendment. The Southern Republican Party ended with the vanishing of the Reconstruction the Southern state governments nullified both the 14th and 15th Amendments. They opposed the 15 th Amendment because they thought that the people of color were inferior in terms of mental capacity and they could not have the same rights as the white Americans. Contrary to that, the people who supported the Amendment argued that people were equal despite their race.
The 19th Amendment was passed on June 4th, 1919, by the Congress and then ratified on August 18th, 1920, and it provided voting rights to women. The passing and ratification of the 19th Amendment came after a lengthy and hard struggle which included agitation and protests (Cascio & Washington, 2014). During the struggle for the passing and ratification of the 19th Amendment, there was fierce opposition and resistance where the supporters were jailed, heckled, and physical injuries were inflicted on the people. The people who opposed the 19 th Amendment argued that women were not made for it since mental extortion would jeopardize their reproductive health.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law The Voting Rights Act of 1965. The objective of the Act was to remove all the barriers that were in the local and state levels that hindered African Americans from voting. It became a landmark in the civil rights legislation in the history of the United States. There was a lot of opposition when the bill was being debated on the U.S. Senate that the debate took over a month. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 criminalized the use of literacy tests, and required the federal state to oversight states which had more than 50% of non-white people were not registered as voters (Hayduk, 2004). The American attorney general was given the mandate of investigating states and local governments which used poll taxes. The reason for opposition was that the Act was taking away the rights of White Americans. However, most people argued that all people were equal regardless of gender, race, religion, wealth or education.
In conclusion, although the United States adopted a democratic system of governance, voting rights were limited to a few men who were white landowners. The women, minority groups, and the less fortunate were denied the right to vote. However, successive Amendments to the American constitution and the culmination in the Voting Rights Act which saw that all people in America had a right to vote.
References
Berman, A. (2015). Give us the ballot: The modern struggle for voting rights in America . Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Bodenhorn, H. (2014). Voting Rights, Shareholdings, and Leverage at Nineteenth-Century US Banks. The Journal of Law and Economics , 57 (2), 431-458.
Cascio, E. U., & Washington, E. (2014). Valuing the vote: The redistribution of voting rights and state funds following the voting rights act of 1965. The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 129 (1), 379-433.
Hayduk, R. (2004). Democracy for all: restoring immigrant voting rights in the US. New political science , 26 (4), 499-523.
