Voting Rights

Voting Rights

After American colonists were free from Great Britain in 1776, the Voting Rights were not directly addressed in any constitutions or articles. As time went on, constitution had changed a lot. Voting Rights started to be extended to more citizens, enabling more people to participate in government.There were four main revolutions during the development of Voting Rights. The first one was in 1789, some states started to have male taxpayers votes, yet most states did not allow African Americans or males under the age of 21 to vote. African Americans had the voting rights since 1870. The Fifteenth Amendment to Constitution guaranteed African Americans the rights to vote. The third revolution was in 1920, when women were the sponsors of the revolution. And finally the Nineteenth Amendment allowed women to vote. Four years after the revolution, voting rights, as well as the citizenship, was extended to Native Americans. The final revision of the voting rights was in 1971, the Twenty-sixth Amendment. It stated that citizens “eighteen years of age of older” have the rights to vote.

African Americans voting in 1870

Women trying to receive the rights to vote in 1920

A 1920 Voting Pin

by, Sam C and Julian T

Voting Rights

By Alvin            

  Although America was based on a representative government where the people chose elected government officials, voting rights in the beginning of the American history was limited to few.  At first, different states had different voting requirements since the Articles of Confederation did not set up guidelines regarding voting rights.  Most states only granted voting rights to male property owners but some states such as Georgia and Pennsylvania included all male taxpayers.  Mostly, states required the minimum voting age to be at least 21.  The new Constitution that replaced the Articles of Confederation did not extend voting rights and little changed.  The process to extend and guarantee voting rights to more groups in the national level was started when the Fifteenth Amendment passed in 1870. 

Even if some states in the early years extended the rights to free African Americans, it was not until the passage of Fifteenth Amendment that the federal government tried to guarantee the rights to African Americans.  Unfortunately, deep racial prejudice led states especially in the South to use methods such as poll taxes and literacy tests to prevent African Americans to exercise this right.  These unfair methods were finally suspended almost a century later through the passage of Twenty-fourth Amendment and Voting Rights Act.  

Up until 1920, women did not have the right to vote.  Continuous protests finally pressed the Congress to pass the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted voting rights to women, and in 1924, voting rights were further extended to all citizens who were at least 21 years of age including Native Americans.  Finally, the Twenty-sixth Amendment in 1971 granted rights to citizens of at least 18 years old.  This was a result of the controversy during the Vietnam War of not giving them the right to vote but permitted the government to draft them to the war.  Currently, voting rights are extended to all citizens who are over the age of 18 to enable more citizens to participate in shaping the local and national government.