The History of the Right to Vote in the United States

1. The History of the Right to Vote in the United States Professor Alex Keyssar Harvard University Reading Public Schools December 15, 2009

2. 1. The Constitutional Era • State patterns • The original sin of the federal constitution

3. Today a man owns a jackass worth fifty dollars and he is entitled to vote; but before the next election the jackass dies. The man in the mean time has become more experienced, his knowledge of the principles of government, and his acquaintance with mankind, are more extensive, and he is therefore better qualified to make a proper selection of rulers—but the jackass is dead and the man cannot vote. Now gentlemen, pray inform me, in whom is the right of suffrage? In the man or in the jackass?Benjamin Franklin, The Casket, or Flowers of Literature, Wit and Sentiment (1828)

4. 2. The era of ascendant democracy (1790-1869) • Why did some folks permit others to vote? • Property and taxpaying restrictions, Massachusetts, 1820 • See RV, quotations, pp. 3, 23, 28 • Non-citizens • The Dorr War • The 15th Amendment and Henry Wilson of Natick (see text of 15th amendment in US constitution and RV quotes, pp. 76, inset quote from Henry Wilson at bottom and before that quote from text – at top of page – of his version of 15th amendment.)

5. To attempt to govern men without seeking their consent is usurpation and tyranny, whether in Ohio or in Austria. . . . I was looking the other day . . . into Noah Webster’s Dictionary for the meaning of democracy, and I found as I expected that he defines a democrat to be “one who favors universal suffrage.”Norton Townshend, Ohio Constitutional Convention, 1850

6. It ought to be remembered, Sir, that manufacturers are rapidly increasing; and their employers may bring them in regiments to the polls. Sir, if they come in regiments to the polls to vote; they go in regiments to fight the enemies of their beloved country.Legislative Debate, Connecticut, 1818

7. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude— The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. TheFifteenth Amendment

8. discrimination is prohibited… “among the citizens of the United States in the exercise of the elective franchise or in the right to hold office in any State on account of race, color, nativity, property, education or creed.” Henry Wilson’s version of the 15th Amendment

9. Let us give to all citizens equal rights, and then protect everybody in the United States in the exercise of those rights. When we attain that position we shall have carried out logically the ideas that lie at the foundation of our institutions; we shall be in harmony with our professions; we shall have acted like a truly republican and Christian people. Until we do that we are in a false position, an illogical position—a position that cannot be defended; a position that I believe is dishonorable to the nation with the lights we have before us.Henry Wilson

10. Retreating from universal suffrage (1850s to WW I) • Jim Crow and the South • Loss of faith in the North • The Know-Nothings, Massachusetts, and the first grandfather clauses • (See Parkman quote in RV, p. 98) • Non-citizens • Literacy tests • Delays to women’s suffrage • War and suffrage (Civil War and WW I)

11. A New England village of the olden time—that is to say, of some forty years ago—would have been safely and well governed by the votes of every man in it; but, now that the village has grown into a populous city, with its factories and workshops, its acres of tenement-houses, and thousands and ten thousands of restless workmen, foreigners for the most part, to whom liberty means license and politics means plunder, to whom the public good is nothing and their own most trivial interests everything, who love the country for what they can get out of it, and whose ears are open to the promptings of every rascally agitator, the case is completely changed, and universal suffrage becomes a questionable blessing. Francis Parkman

12. To get the word “male” in effect out of the Constitution cost the women of the country fifty-two years of pauseless campaign…During that time they were forced to conduct 56 campaigns of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to get legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; 47 campaigns to get state constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into state constitutions; 277 campaigns to get state party conventions to include woman suffrage planks; 30 campaigns to get presidential party conventions to adopt woman suffrage planks in party platforms, and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses. Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie R. Shuler Women Suffrage and Politics (1926)

13. Mr. Halfhill: Now, gentlemen, this question of franchise is not, as has been sometimes debated and urged, an inalienable right; it is a conferred right, and it must be conferred under our theory of government and under our organization of society. Mr. Fackler: If suffrage is a conferred right and not a natural one, who conferred that right on us? Ohio Constitution Convention, 1912

14. 4. Stasis (1921 -1965) • With some exceptions during the war

15. 5. A revolutionary transformation: (1965-93) • The Voting Rights Act: enforcing the 15th amendment • Harper v. Virginia (“wealth is not germane”) • Literacy, residence, age • Felons • NVRA (Motor Voter) • Districting Issues

16. 6. A New Period? Contestation in an era of formal universal suffrage • 2000 election • Photo ID laws