Voting Rights

- Congress passed a 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction there of, are citizens of the United States and of the states in which they reside," thus repudiating the Dred Scott ruling which had denied slaves their right of citizenship. The 15th amendment provided that, “The rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be be denied or abridged by the United States or any states on the account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.”

During the era of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, the nation seemed to be split down the middle in terms of its citizens. Obviously this is not meant to be taken literally, as the citizens of the United States were divided in terms of political views, morals, and other very important topics. One of these topics happened to be the act of expanding suffrage to people other than rich landowners. Both arguments in this debate were represented with a number of different types of evidence as to why each side was the correct way to go about shaping the way people voted in the United States and why the opposing opinion was not to be trusted. There were both pros and cons of expanding suffrage in the United States, but some were more valid than others.

The emancipation proclamation was what seemed like the beginning of freedom for African Americans. African Americans fought hard and valiantly in the American Civil war and with the Unions win freedom and peace for blacks seemed to be assured. As most people would quote," Freedom isn 't free." It almost always has a cost. Africans Americans since the origin of this country have literally laid down their lives for the cost of freedom and opportunity in the US. One of the most coveted freedom 's both past and present is the right to suffrage. My paper discusses the many factors leading to and the trials and tribulations involving black 's right to vote. In this paper, I will discuss the constitutional amendments as well as the landmark supreme court cases that affected both the lives and voting rights of African Americans during the time period of 1865 through 1900.

Throughout America’s history the franchise has been withheld from different groups. This has been possible due to weakly written laws that do not provide adequate protections. In 1965 PL 89-110 was passed, this law, commonly known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, finally provided real protections for minorities living in southern states. In recent years the language of the law was modified within the Supreme Court to take away the law’s primary power. In the following mock Congressional testimony we will go back to 1848, 13 years before the American Civil War, and provide evidence of why a law like PL 89-110 is necessary and commendable.

vote in the early 1900’s, still it was not until nearly one hundred years ago that they were granted

In Document 2: Voting Qualifications made white, christian, men who owned and/or rented property, were the only people allowed to vote during this time. Regular free and fair elections are where most adult citizens have the right to vote/run for office regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, and level of wealth. This was a work in progress during colonial America because it discriminated against the other citizens who had a right to

Most states also removed residency requirements for voting. Immigrant males were permitted to vote in most states if they had declared their intention to become citizens.

A victory for voting rights occurs in 1856 when North Carolina is the last state to remove property ownership as a requirement to vote. The issue with this though is that voting is expanded to all white men, and no one else.

Three court cases that played a huge role in the relationship between citizenship, rights to suffrage and representation of the American democracy are The People of the State of California v. George W. Hall, Dred Scott v. Sandford and Guinn v. United States, where each case left a lasting change in the minority group’s flight for equality. In the case of The People of the State of California v. George W. Hall, the Supreme Court ruled that a White defendant was falsely convicted of murdering a Chinese person on the basis of the testimony from a Chinese witness. On appeal, the defendant’s lawyer argued that a non-white witness could not testify against a white person (Shaw et al., 2015, p. 141), where in the state of California, blacks, mulattos, and Indians could not testify in any case against a white person because they were not reliable in court because they were, “no recognize the Chinese and other Asians as a full person whose testimony were admissible in court,” (Shaw et al., 2015, p. 142). The court decision emulated the prejudice that was heavily present in the United States, especially Anti-Asian Movement, because they were seen as, “inferior, who were incapable of progress or intellectual development beyond a certain point,” or “claim any citizenship rights” (Shaw et al., 2015, p. 142) and were left unable to protect themselves or their rights because the ruling ultimately dehumanized them into being seen as mediocre asinine individuals. In the case Dred Scott v.

In “Race and Beyond: Why Young, Minority, and Low-Income Citizens Don’t Vote,” Sam Fulwood claims, “Regardless of whether a favored candidate won or popular ballot initiative passed, our nation suffered because of the number of people who didn’t vote at all” (par. 2). I agree with Sam Fulwood and I believe it is so unfortunate that Americans don’t use this right. Voting is one of the most valuable possessions that Americans are given and yet they do not use. Many of the countries around the world do not grant voting rights to their citizens. These countries either have a dictatorship or kingdom which prevents citizens from voting. People need to understand the sufferings of those people who struggled for this right. When the United States

The Voting Rights Act 42 U.S.C. §§ 1973 et seq., decision is important regarding the laws governing voting rights and their relationship to minority voters. Its implication and effects however does not end within the legal realms and dimensions but continues through to society, culture, and human rights. The Voting Rights Act initially established in 1965 under Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration protected “racial minorities” from biased voting practices. It was a huge stride in the civil rights movement and a victory over harmful, archaic, and biased voting practices and traditions.

The research will examine voting rights in relation to voting right inequalities and the society’s effort to have an all minority groups included in the civic process. The research will look into several historical factors that contributed to voting rights inequalities and how the society has evolved to solve issues related to the right to vote.

Between 1900 and 1970, a series of laws and Constitutional amendments strengthened American democracy through the expansion of voting rights.  At the beginning of the twentieth century, the vote was largely restricted to white males over the age of 21.  Seventy years later, women, African-Americans, and college-age youth enjoyed unprecedented access to the ballot.  These monumental gains came through hard struggle and organized social movements.  Interestingly, the causes that initially animated these movements did not focus on voting.  The early twentieth century women’s suffrage movement came on the heels of heightened women’s activism in the area of Progressive reform.  Later in the century a Civil Rights movement focused on desegregation and an anti-war crusade prompted their primary proponents to turn their attention to voting rights.  These three cases demonstrate that the expansion of American democracy in the twentieth century was driven by a

Voting--the pinnacle of democracy, suffrage for all. While it took a couple of centuries for the United States to guarantee universal suffrage, we now have it, regardless of sex or race. The struggle of acquiring suffrage is a long history, one that we as Americans paradoxically praise and condemn, but it is history, and now we must look towards the future. Yet, Harvard Professor Dr. Judith Shklar argues otherwise in her lecture “Voting” where she navigates the history behind the long battle for universal suffrage in the United States. More importantly, she provokes the audience when she presents an unorthodox history of the struggle for suffrage:

The privilege to vote is a political right. In any case, it mirrors a more profound good right, one that dwells at the heart of the defense of the state inside the liberal fair convention. According Cholbi article the state gets its authenticity from its capacity to ensure or upgrade rights or good qualities people are thought to have originally of the state. On this view, the privilege to vote, however expressly political, takes after from a pre-political right. This is the privilege to shape the states of one's own reality and seek after one's own particular considered origination of the great free from encumbrance aside from while doing as such disregards others' rights to do likewise. Underneath the established liberal talk of the rights