Results 1 to 3 of 3

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    PARADISE (San Diego)
    Posts
    99,040

    Voting rights in the United States

    Voting rights in the United States

    From Wikipedia.

    The issue of voting rights in the United States has been contentious over the country's history.

    Eligibility to vote in the U.S. is determined by both Federal and state law.

    Currently, only citizens can vote in U.S. elections (although this has not always been the case).

    Who is (or who can become) a citizen is governed on a national basis by Federal law.


    Absent of federal law or constitutional amendment, each State is given considerable discretion to establish qualifications for suffrage and candidacy within their own jurisdiction.

    Over time, the federal role in elections has increased through amendments and enacted legislation, such as the Voting Rights Act.[1] At least four of the fifteen post-Civil War Constitutional amendments were ratified specifically to extend voting rights to different groups of citizens. These extensions state that voting rights cannot be denied or abridged based on

    The no religious test clause of the United States Constitution is found in Article VI, section 3.
    "Race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (15th Amendment, 1870)
    "On account of sex" (19th Amendment, 1920)
    "By reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax" (24th Amendment, 1964)
    "Who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of age" (26th Amendment, 1971).
    In addition, the 17th Amendment provided for the direct election of United States Senators.

    The "right to vote" is explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution in the above referenced Amendments, but only in reference to the fact that the franchise cannot be denied or abridged based solely on the aforementioned qualifications. In other words, the "right to vote" is perhaps better understood, in layman's terms, as only prohibiting certain forms of legal discrimination in establishing qualifications for suffrage.

    The "right to vote" may or may not be denied for other reasons.

    For example, many States require eligible citizens to register to vote a set number of days prior to the election in order to vote.

    More controversial restrictions include those laws that prohibit convicted felons from voting or, as seen in Bush v. Gore, disputes as to what rules should apply in counting or recounting ballots [2]

    A state may choose to fill an office by means other than an election. For example, upon death or resignation of a legislator, the state may allow the affiliated political party to choose a replacement to hold office until the next scheduled election. Such an appointment is often affirmed by the governor.[3]

    Contents [hide]
    1 Milestones of national franchise extension
    2 Limitations of franchise
    3 Removal of exclusions
    3.1 Religion test
    3.2 African Americans and poor whites
    3.3 Women
    3.4 Young people
    3.5 Prisoners
    3.6 Durational residency
    3.7 Special interest elections
    4 Current status
    4.1 Overseas and nonresident citizens
    4.2 District of Columbia
    4.3 Puerto Rico
    4.4 Accessibility
    4.5 Candidacy requirements
    4.6 Noncitizens
    5 See also
    6 References
    7 External links

    [edit] Milestones of national franchise extension
    Abolition of property qualifications for white men, 1812-1860 — see: Jacksonian democracy
    Non-white men, 1870 — see: Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
    Women, 1920 — see: Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
    Native Americans, 1924 — see:[4]
    Residents of the District of Columbia for US Presidential Elections, 1961 — see: Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution
    Poor, 1964 — see: Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting imposition of poll tax in Federal elections
    Racial minorities in certain states, 1965 — see Voting Rights Act
    Adults between 18 and 21, 1971 — see: Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution
    United States Military and Uniformed Services, Merchant Marine, other Citizens overseas, living on bases in the US, abroad, or aboard ship, 1986 — see: Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act[5]
    [edit] Limitations of franchise
    Restoring District of Columbia voting rights for full voting US Representatives in the US House, US Senators in US Senate, State Offices such as elected State Governor and State Legislature, all of these repealed since 1801 by the US Congress.
    Granting Statehood to current US territories that have never had Statehood, Puerto Rico[citation needed], US Virgin Islands, and several others.[citation needed]
    National Standard for voting in primaries if 18th Birthday is between the primary and the election.
    National Standard for prisoner disenfranchisement.
    [edit] Removal of exclusions
    Each extension of voting rights has been a product of, and also brought about, social change.

    [edit] Religion test
    In several British North American colonies, before and after the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Jews, Quakers and/or Catholics were excluded from the franchise and/or from running for elections [6].

    The Delaware Constitution of 1776 stated that "Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat, or entering upon the execution of his office, shall (…) also make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration." [7]. This was repealed by article I, section2. of the 1792 Constitution: "No religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, under this State." [8]. The 1778 Constitution of the State of South Carolina stated that "No person shall be eligible to sit in the house of representatives unless he be of the Protestant religion" [9], the 1777 Constitution of the State of Georgia (art. VI) that "The representatives shall be chosen out of the residents in each county (…) and they shall be of the Protestant religion" [10].

    With the growth in the number of Baptists in Virginia before the Revolution, the issues of religious freedom became important to rising leaders such as James Madison. As a young lawyer, he defended Baptist preachers who were not licensed by (and were opposed by) the established state Anglican Church. He carried developing ideas about religious freedom to be incorporated into the constitutional convention of the United States.

    In 1787, Article One of the United States Constitution stated that "the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature". More significantly, Article Six disavowed the religious test requirements of several states, saying: "[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

    In Maryland, voting rights and eligibility as candidates were extended to Jewish Americans in 1828.[11]

    [edit] African Americans and poor whites
    See also: Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
    See also: Disfranchisement after the Civil War
    At the time of ratification of the Constitution, most states used property qualifications to restrict the franchise; the exact amount varied by state, but by some estimates, over half of white men were barred from voting. [12] In some states, free men of color (though the property requirement in New York was eventually dropped for whites but not for blacks) also possessed the vote, a fact that was emphasized in Justice Curtis's dissent in Dred Scott v. Sandford:

    Of this there can be no doubt. At the time of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, all free native-born inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not only citizens of those States, but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors, on equal terms with other citizens. [13]

    The Supreme Court of North Carolina upheld the ability of free African Americans to vote before they were disfranchised by decision of the North Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1835. At the same time, convention delegates relaxed religious and property qualifications for whites.[14] Alabama entered the union in 1819 with universal white suffrage provided for in its constitution. Its actions in the late 19th century disfranchised poor whites as well as blacks.

    The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, one of three adopted in response to the American Civil War, prevented any state from denying the right to vote to any citizen on account of his race. This was primarily related to protecting the franchise of freedmen, but it also applied to non-white minorities such as Mexican Americans in Texas. The state governments under Reconstruction adopted new state Constitutions or amendments designed to protect the ability of freedmen to vote. The unsettled environment after the war regularly erupted with violence as groups tried to protect their power. Particularly in the South, in the aftermath of the Civil War, whites started working to limit the ability of freedmen to vote. In the 1860s, secret vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) used violence and intimidation to keep freedmen in a controlled role and reestablish white supremacy. Nonetheless, freedmen registered and voted in high numbers, and many were elected to local offices through the 1880s.

    In the mid-1870s there was a rise in more powerful paramilitary groups, such as the White League, originating in Louisiana in 1874 after a disputed election; and the Red Shirts, originating in Mississippi in 1875 and growing in North and South Carolina; as well as other "White Line" rifle clubs. They operated openly, were more organized than the KKK, and directed their efforts at political goals: to disrupt Republican organizing, turn Republicans out of office, and intimidate or kill blacks to suppress black voting. They worked as "the military arm of the Democratic Party."[15] For instance, estimates were that 150 blacks were killed in North Carolina before the 1876 elections. Economic tactics such as eviction from rental housing or termination of employment were also used. Black voting was suppressed and white Democrats regained power in the South by the late 1870s. Then the legislators worked to create more complicated voter registration or election requirements, which reduced black voting more permanently.

    African Americans were a majority in three southern states following the Civil War, and represented over 40% of the population in four other states. While they did not elect a majority of African Americans to office during Reconstruction, whites feared and resented the political power which they exercised.[16] After ousting the Republicans, whites worked to restore white supremacy.

    From 1890 to 1908, ten of the eleven former Confederate states completed political suppression by ratifying new constitutions or amendments which incorporated provisions to disfranchise blacks and poor whites. These included such methods as a poll tax, record keeping, timing of registration in relation to elections, felony disenfranchisement focusing on crimes thought to be committed by African Americans,[17] complex residency requirements, and a literacy test. Focusing on both blacks and poor whites ensured that there would be no coalition between them as had arisen in the elections of 1894, when Populist-Republican tickets wrested power away from Democrats. Prospective voters had to prove the ability to read and write the English language to white voter registrars, who in practice used subjective requirements. Blacks were often denied the right to vote on this basis. Even literate blacks were often told they had "failed" such a test, if in fact, it had been administered. On the other hand, illiterate whites were sometimes allowed to vote through a "grandfather clause" which waived literacy requirements if one's grandfather had been a qualified voter before 1866, or had served as a soldier, or was from a foreign country. As most blacks had grandfathers who were slaves before 1866, they could not use the grandfather clause exemption. Selective enforcement of the poll tax was frequently also used to disqualify black and poor white voters.

    African Americans quickly began legal challenges to such provisions in the 19th century, but it was years before any were successful before the U.S. Supreme Court. Booker T. Washington, better known for his public stance of trying to work within constraints at Tuskegee University, secretly helped fund and arrange representation for numerous legal challenges to disfranchisement. He called upon Northern allies to raise funds for the cause.[18] The Supreme Court's upholding of Mississippi's provisions, in Williams v. Mississippi (1898), encouraged other states to follow the Mississippi plan of disfranchisement. African Americans brought other legal challenges, as in Giles v. Harris (1903) and Giles v. Teasley (1904), but the Supreme Court upheld Alabama constitutional provisions.

    From early in the 20th century, the newly established National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took the lead in organizing or supporting legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement. Gradually they planned the strategy of which cases to take forward. In Guinn v. United States (1915), the first case in which the NAACP filed a brief, Supreme Court struck down the grandfather clause in Oklahoma and Maryland. Other states in which it was used had to retract their legislation as well. The challenge was successful.

    Nearly as rapidly as the Supreme Court determined a specific provision was unconstitutional, however, state legislatures developed new statutes to continue to disfranchise African Americans, minorities and poor whites. In Smith v. Allwright (1944), the Supreme Court struck down the use of state-sanctioned all-white primaries by the Democratic Party in the South. States developed still other restrictions on black voting. The NAACP continued with steady progress in legal challenges to disfranchisement and segregation.

    As late as 1962, programs such as Operation Eagle Eye in Arizona attempted to stymie minority voting through literacy tests. The Twenty-fourth Amendment was ratified in 1964 to prohibit poll taxes as a condition of voter registration and voting in federal elections. Full enfranchisement of citizens was not secured until after the American Civil Rights Movement gained passage by the United States Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Congress passed the legislation because it found "case by case litigation was inadequate to combat widespread and persistent discrimination in voting." Activism by African Americans thus helped secure an expanded and protected franchise that benefited all Americans.

    The bill provided for Federal oversight if necessary to ensure just voter registration and election procedures. The rate of African-American registration and voting in Southern states climbed dramatically and quickly, but it took years of Federal oversight to work out the processes and overcome local resistance. In addition, it was not until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) that all state poll taxes (for both state and federal elections) were officially declared unconstitutional as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This removed a burden on the poor.

    [edit] Women
    See also: History of women's suffrage in the United States
    A parallel, yet separate, movement was that for women's suffrage. Outstanding leaders of the suffrage movement included Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In some ways this, too, could be said to have grown out of the American Civil War, as women had been strong leaders of the abolition movement. Middle and upper class women generally became more politically active in the northern tier during and after the war.

    Wyoming was the first state in which women were able to vote, although it was a condition of the transition to statehood. Colorado was the first established state to allow women to vote on the same basis as men. Some other states also extended the franchise to women before the Constitution was amended. With ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, women were granted the right to vote in time to participate in the Presidential election of 1920.

    Another political movement that was largely driven by women in the same era was the anti-alcohol Temperance movement, which led to the Eighteenth Amendment and Prohibition.

    [edit] Young people
    See also: Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution

    States (shown in gray) allowing 17-year-olds to vote in primaries/caucuses if their 18th birthday is before the actual election.A third voting rights movement was one in the 1960s to lower the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. This movement was given far greater impetus by the Vietnam War, as it was noted that most of the young men who were being drafted to fight in it were too young to have any voice in the selection of the leaders who were sending them to fight. This, too, had previously been a state issue, as several states, notably Georgia, Kentucky, and Hawaii, had already allowed voting at a younger age than twenty-one. The Twenty-sixth Amendment, ratified in 1971, required all states to set a voting age no higher than eighteen. As of 2008, no state has opted for an earlier age, although some state governments have discussed it.[19] Some states, however, permit people who will be 18 on or before the general election to vote in primary elections and caucuses.

    [edit] Prisoners
    Prisoner voting rights is a state issue, so the laws are different from state to state. Some states allow only individuals on probation and ex-felons to vote. Others allow individuals on parole, probation and ex-felons to vote.

    As of July 2007, fourteen states, eleven of them in the South, ban anyone with a felony conviction from voting for life, even after the person has served the sentence, while only two states, Maine and Vermont, allow incarcerated individuals to vote.[20]

    According to the Sentencing Project, 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of a felony conviction ("felony disenfranchisement").[21] The number of people disenfranchised amounts to approximately 2.42% of the otherwise-eligible voting population.[citation needed] This is in sharp contrast to European nations, like Norway, allow ex-felons to vote after serving sentences and in some cases[which?] allow prisoners to vote. Prisoners have been allowed to vote in Canada since 2002.[22]

    The United States has a higher proportion of its population in prison than any other Western nation,[23] and more than Russia or China.[24]. The dramatic rise in the rate of incarceration in the United States, a 500% increase from the 1970s to the 1990s due to criminalization of certain behaviors, strict sentencing guidelines and changes in philosophy, has vastly increased the number of people disfranchised because of the felon provisions. Given the prison populations, the effects have been most disadvantageous for minority and poor communities.[25]

    [edit] Durational residency
    The Supreme Court of the United States struck down one-year residency requirements to vote in Dunn v. Blumstein 405 U.S. 330 (1972).[26] The Court ruled that limits on voter registration of up to 30 to 50 days prior to an election were permissible for logistical reasons, but that residency requirements in excess of that violated equal protection as granted under the Fourteenth Amendment according to strict scrutiny.

    [edit] Special interest elections
    Even after the above restrictions on the franchise were lifted for general elections, several locales retained similar restrictions for specialized local elections, such as for school boards, special districts, or bond issues. Property restrictions, duration of residency restrictions, and, for school boards, restrictions of the franchise to voters with children remained in force. In a series of rulings from 1969 to 1973, the Court ruled that the franchise could be restricted in some cases to those "primarily interested" or "primarily affected" by the outcome of a specialized election, but not in the case of school boards or bond issues, which affected taxation of all residents.[3] In Ball v. James 451 U.S. 335 (1981) the Court further upheld a system of plural voting where votes for the board of directors of a water reclamation district were allocated on the basis of the area of land owned in the district.[3]

    The Court placed restrictions on party political primaries as well. While states were permitted to require voters to register for a party 30 days before an election, or to require them to vote in only one party primary, they were not allowed to prevent a voter from voting in a party primary if the voter has voted in another party's primary in the last 23 months.[3] The Court also ruled that a state may not mandate a 'closed primary' system and bar independents from voting in a party's primary against the wishes of the party itself. (Tashijan v. Republican Party of Connecticut 479 U.S. 208 (1986))[27]

    The Office of Hawaiian Affairs of the state of Hawaii, created in 1978, limited voting eligibility and candidate eligibility to the native Hawaiians on whose behalf it manages 1,800,000 acres (7,300 km2) of ceded land. The Supreme Court of the United States struck down the franchise restriction under the Fifteenth Amendment in Rice v. Cayetano 528 U.S. 495 (2000), following by eliminating the candidate restriction in Arakaki v. State of Hawai‘i a few months later.

    [edit] Current status
    Adult citizens of the United States who are residents of one of the 50 states or the District of Columbia may not be restrained from voting for a variety of protected reasons, stated in the aforementioned 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments.

    [edit] Overseas and nonresident citizens
    U.S. citizens residing overseas who would otherwise have the right to vote are guaranteed the right to vote in Federal elections by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) of 1986.[5] As a practical matter, individual states implement UOCAVA.

    U.S. citizens who reside in Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, or the United States Virgin Islands are not allowed to vote in U.S. national and presidential elections as these U.S. territories belong to the United States but are not part of the United States (i.e., they are unincorporated territories). The U.S. Constitution requires a voter to be a resident citizen of the United States proper.

    A citizen who has never resided in the United States can vote if a parent is eligible to vote in certain states.[28] In some of these states the citizen can vote in local, state and federal elections, in others in federal elections only.

    [edit] District of Columbia
    Main article: District of Columbia voting rights
    Residents of the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., have neither effective local control nor full representation in the U.S. House or Senate. The Twenty-third Amendment gave the District of Columbia three electors and hence the right to vote for President. In 1978, Congress proposed a constitutional amendment that would have allowed the District a seat for representation in the Congress as well. This amendment failed to receive ratification by sufficient number of states within the seven years required.

    Since then, Congress has consistently refused to offer for ratification a constitutional amendment that would give District of Columbia residents either representation in both the Senate and the House, as if the District were a state, or, as has also been proposed, voting representation in the House only. Additionally, Congress has continued to use its constitutional jurisdiction over the District "in all cases whatsoever" to countermand the expressed will of District voters through laws passed by their local elected officials. For this reason, many Washington residents call their city "The Last Colony", the home of "taxation without representation".

    [edit] Puerto Rico
    Main article: Voting rights in Puerto Rico
    Puerto Rico is an insular area — a United States territory that is neither a part of one of the fifty states nor a part of the District of Columbia, the nation's federal district. Insular areas, such as Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, are not allowed to choose electors in U.S. presidential elections or elect voting members of the U.S. Congress. This grows out of Article one and Article two of the United States constitution, which specifically mandate that electors are to be chosen by "the People of the several States". In 1961, the 23rd amendment to the constitution extended the right to choose electors to the District of Columbia.

    Any U.S. citizen who resides in Puerto Rico (whether a Puerto Rican or not) is effectively disenfranchised at the national level. Although the Republican Party and Democratic Party chapters in Puerto Rico have selected voting delegates to the national nominating conventions participating on U.S. Presidential Primaries or Caucuses, U.S. citizens not residing in one of the 50 States or in the District of Columbia may not vote in Federal elections.

    Various scholars (including a prominent U.S. judge in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit) conclude that the U.S. national-electoral process is not fully democratic due to U.S. Government disenfranchisement of U.S. citizens residing in Puerto Rico.[29][30]

    [edit] Accessibility
    There is also concern with regard to voting rights (or accessibility) for those who are disabled; and with regard to voting rights for those whose primary language is not English. Federal legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA, or "Motor-Voter Act") and the Help America Vote Act of 2001 (HAVA) address some of these concerns of the disabled and non-English speaking.

    [edit] Candidacy requirements
    Jurisprudence concerning candidacy rights and the rights of citizens to create a political party are less clear than voting rights. Different courts have reached different conclusions regarding what sort of restrictions, often in terms of ballot access, public debate inclusion, filing fees, and residency requirements, may be imposed.

    In Williams v Rhodes (1968) the United States Supreme Court did strike down Ohio ballot access laws on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds. However, it subsequently upheld such laws in several other cases. States can require an Independent or minor party candidate to collect signatures as high as five percent of the total votes cast in a particular preceding election before the court will intervene.

    The Supreme Court has also upheld a State ban on cross-party endorsements (also known as electoral fusion) and primary write-in votes.

    [edit] Noncitizens
    Main article: Right of foreigners to vote in the United States
    More than 40 states or territories, including colonies before the Declaration of Independence, allowed non-citizens who satisfied residential requirements to vote in all elections. This in part reflected the strong continuing immigration to the US. Some cities (Chicago), towns or villages (in Maryland) today allow non-citizen residents to vote in school or local elections. Cities in Massachusetts, for instance, have worked with the state legislature to introduce such a proposal. As of 2008, state legislature proposals on non-citizen residents' voting either have been or are being submitted on the matter in New York, Connecticut, Maine and Texas.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rig ... ted_States
    Last edited by JohnDoe2; 07-23-2016 at 07:37 PM.
    NO AMNESTY

    Don't reward the criminal actions of millions of illegal aliens by giving them citizenship.


    Sign in and post comments here.

    Please support our fight against illegal immigration by joining ALIPAC's email alerts here https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  2. #2
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    PARADISE (San Diego)
    Posts
    99,040
    Many Convicted Felons in Florida Had Their Right to Vote Restored ...

    Aug 7, 2008 ... Many Convicted Felons in Florida Had Their Right to Vote Restored Automatically :: Jacksonville Criminal Lawyer Blog.

    http://www.jacksonvillecriminallawyerbl ... ori_1.html
    NO AMNESTY

    Don't reward the criminal actions of millions of illegal aliens by giving them citizenship.


    Sign in and post comments here.

    Please support our fight against illegal immigration by joining ALIPAC's email alerts here https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  3. #3
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    PARADISE (San Diego)
    Posts
    99,040
    California Felon Voting Rights

    California allows former felons to vote, but the state prohibits voting by people incarcerated in prison or on parole. According to ...

    www.californiafelonparty.org/
    NO AMNESTY

    Don't reward the criminal actions of millions of illegal aliens by giving them citizenship.


    Sign in and post comments here.

    Please support our fight against illegal immigration by joining ALIPAC's email alerts here https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •