Who gets to vote?
Dear Leading Ladies,
We thought it might be interesting to ask some friends, relatives, or colleagues – or reflect on our own experiences as immigrants – what voting was like in their countries of origin. Did every adult get to vote? Was it mandatory? Were there fines or punishments for not voting? Were some segments of the population excluded from voting because of religion, class, race, or other reasons? Was voting day a public holiday? Were there impediments to voting, such as voting stations that were hard to get to or only open during working hours? How do these naturalized Americans view the voting experience in the United States in comparison to their countries of origin?
We would love to hear some of the responses. We know that the United States has always prided itself publicly on its democracy and voting rights, but we also know that disenfranchisement has existed, both historically and in our own times.
With campaigns already ramping up for the 2024 presidential, House and Senate elections, we thought it a good time to look at the history of voting in the United States. Who, historically, has made the decisions, who has been left out, and who is still wielding the most power.
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A history lesson in U.S. suffrage
In 1789, only 6% of the population could vote in the presidential election. They were all over 21, property-owning, white, male Protestants. Women in New Jersey and a smattering of Black, male, property holders in some parts of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Maryland could also vote until the right was rescinded in the early 19th century. The Constitution left it mostly to the states to decide the rules about voting and some states even instituted religious tests to ensure that only Christians could vote.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 codified the first voting guidelines, granting the vote to “free white persons” of “good moral character.” It didn’t specifically exclude women, but it did insist that citizenship was inherited through fathers. Five years later, an act that required five years of residence in order to gain citizenship, and therefore the right to vote, superseded the earlier requirement of only two years.
During the early part of the 19th century, many states dropped the property requirement for voting and it all but disappeared by 1856, with North Carolina the last to stop. This coincided with the expansion to territories acquired after the Mexican-American War when those residing in the newly acquired land initially gained citizenship but not voting rights, according to a timeline created by Facing History and Ourselves.
“Following a period that lacked political parties or choices for voters, the 1820s saw the return of a two-party political system, as well as a renewed interest in suffrage,” National Geographic explains. Soon, all white men could vote.
After the Civil War
In 1865, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States. In 1868, after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” including male former slaves. The 14th Amendment also granted "the equal protection of the laws" to all citizens. In 1870, the 15th Amendment prohibited federal and state governments from denying the right to vote on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." During this period known as Reconstruction, things were looking pretty good for a while.
These three amendments owed their passage in large part to the work of the Radical Republicans who then controlled Congress. Led by Thaddeus Stevens in the House and Charles Sumner in the Senate, the Radicals opposed slavery and worked for civil rights for Blacks during Reconstruction. “These men were primarily white Northerners who wanted to restrict the political power of the South following its rebellion against the U.S. federal government,” according to National Geographic.”
Unfortunately, Jim Crow laws prevailed as power was returned to the states, so that much of the good promised by the Radicals and the amendments was negated. Many states and counties, particularly in the South, used tactics such as violent intimidation, poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses to prevent huge numbers of African-Americans from voting for nearly another century while Native Americans and women of all races still remained disenfranchised, as illustrated in the Facing History and Ourselves timeline.
And what about the Native Americans?
While the 14th Amendment classified anyone born in the United States a citizen and granted “the equal protection of the laws” to all citizens, it didn’t include Native Americans because they were considered under tribal law. It wouldn’t be until the Citizen Act of 1924 that full citizenship with the right to vote was granted to Native Americans born in the U.S. “Even with the passing of this citizenship bill, Native Americans were still prevented from participating in elections because the Constitution left it up to the states to decide who has the right to vote,” according to the Library of Congress. “After the passage of the 1924 citizenship bill, it still took over forty years for all fifty states to allow Native Americans to vote.” As with African Americans, “even with the lawful right to vote in every state, Native Americans suffered from the same mechanisms and strategies, such as poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud and intimidation, that kept African Americans from exercising that right.”
Remember the ladies
In 1920, women citizens were granted the right to vote with the ratification of the 29th Amendment, following the decades-long work of suffragists. Women of color remained disenfranchised, particularly in the South, by all the illegal and manipulative means that Black men were denied the vote up until the Civil Rights Era and even today. Fun fact: Wyoming was the first state to give women the vote in 1869!
The Civil Rights Era
The Civil Rights Movement, from 1963-65, marked a significant time of work towards establishing equal voting rights. Large voter registration drives in Black communities in the South grabbed headlines and influenced Congress. Policies such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and English-language requirements, aimed at suppressing voting among people of color, immigrants, and low-income groups, came to light. “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 Carnegie Organization reported. “The first march was brutally attacked by police and others on a day that came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.” After a second march was cut short, a throng of thousands finally made the journey, arriving in Montgomery on March 24 and drawing nationwide attention to the issue.”
As a result, in 1964, Congress ratified the 24th Amendment, banning poll taxes. The following year, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act which prohibited voting discrimination and imposed federal oversight of voting operations in most Southern states. Minority voter registration surged almost overnight.
Vietnam and the vote
In 1971, as young men were still worried about dying in an unpopular war in a far-off country, the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. The two issues were not unrelated. With the war being fought mostly by young men, draftees 18 and over, sentiment held that if they are old enough to fight and die for their country, they are also old enough to vote. In 1972, 55.4% of eligible young voters, ages 18-29 cast their ballots, tying with those in the same age group voting in 2020, the two highest percentiles in the last 48 years, so the new law added a significant number of active voters to the electorate.
Voting Rights Act keep on rollin’
In 1982, Congress passed a law extending the Voting Rights Act for another 25 years and requiring states to take steps to make voting more accessible for the elderly and people with disabilities. Then, in 1993, facing historically low rates of voter registration, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act. Also known as “motor voter,” according to the Carnegie Corporation, “the law required states to allow citizens to register to vote when they applied for their drivers’ licenses. The law also required states to offer mail-in registration and to allow people to register to vote at offices offering public assistance. In the first year of its implementation, more than 30 million people completed their voter registration applications or updated their registration through means made available because of the law.”
But then…
In 2013, the Supreme Court overturned a key provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In Shelby County v. Holder, the Court gutted the Act and opened the doors for states and jurisdictions with a “history of voter suppression to enact restrictive voter identification laws,” according to Carnegie. “A whopping 23 states created new obstacles to voting in the decade leading up to the 2018 elections, according to the nonpartisan coalition Election Protection.” These included strict photo ID requirements and limitations to early voting.
What about now?
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 11 states enacted 13 restrictive laws and 6 implemented stricter photo ID requirements for voter registration or in-person voting between January 1 and May 29, 2023. “The total of 13 restrictive laws enacted so far this year surpasses the total number of restrictive laws enacted in any year in the last decade except 2021.”
Furthermore, at least 322 restrictive bills were introduced in 45 states. Included are one in Oklahoma that would “risk purging voters from the rolls based on unreliable information” and one in Texas that would “increase the maximum number of voters that can be assigned to a polling place, which can burden election officials, increase the likelihood of long lines, and depress voter turnout, particularly for voters of color.” Among the other moving bills – measures that have passed at least one chamber of the state legislature or have had some sort of committee action – “more than half (22) would restrict access to mail voting, 7 would impose stricter voter ID requirements, and 6 would increase the risk of faulty voter purges.”
As we know, all suppressive efforts have “a demonstrable and disproportionate effect on populations that are already underrepresented at the polls,” as the Carnegie report puts it. “Adding to the problems, government at all levels has largely failed to make the necessary investments in elections (from technology to poll-worker training) to ensure the integrity and efficiency of the system.”
The National Council of Jewish Women identify the five major barriers to voter registration and voting as:
photo identification requirements that are difficult for poor people without driver’s licenses to fulfill;
purges that indiscriminately remove names from voter rolls;
criminal disenfranchisement of those with criminal records, a policy that unevenly affects people of color;
diluting the votes of certain groups through planned gerrymandering of districts;
and ignoring the needs for accessibility of such groups as the disabled and non-English speakers.
We know that the United States falls short of its ideals in making voting accessible to all who should be eligible to cast their ballots. Even in 2020, when voter turnout was the highest it has ever been, it was only 66.8%, partly due to apathy and disinterest, but also because voting was just too hard for too many people.
Over the years, voter suppression of Blacks and other people of color has taken many staggering and ugly forms – requiring literacy tests, limiting hours and locations, denying identification papers, instituting poll taxes, and more. Overall, nonetheless, our system measures up pretty well to some countries and not so well to others. Need for improvement would be our assessment on our country’s voting report card.
So what can we do?
Support the organizations working to end voter suppression and increase voter registration and voting. Our favorites are the League of Women Voters , the American Civil Liberties Union, and Fair Fight. Another organization, VoteRiders, founded in 2012, helps citizens acquire the identification they need for whatever state they live in. Check out their website.
Don’t forget to share the stories you collect about the vote in other countries.
And, remember, leading ladies vote!
Therese (she/her/hers)
Judy (she/her/hers)
Didi (she/her/hers)
Leading Ladies Executive Team
LeadingLadiesVote.org