Voting--The Pinnacle Of Democracy, Suffrage For All. While

Did you know that women in the United States did not have the right to vote until the year 1920? Exactly 144 years after the United States was granted freedom from Great Britain. The women’s suffrage movement, however, did not actually start until 1848, and lasted up until they were granted the right to vote in 1920. Women all over the country were fighting for their right to vote in hopes of bettering their lives. The women’s suffrage movement was a long fought process by many people all over the world, over all different races, religions, even gender. (Cooney 1)

Women’s rights is apparent in the fight for suffrage in the late 1800’s-early 1900’s . It can

Voting has not always been as easy as it is today. It is interesting to examine how far America has progressed in its process of allowing different types of people to be able to vote. Voting was once aimed at a particular group of people, which were white males that owned their own property. Today, most people over the age of eighteen can vote, except for the mentally incompetent or people who have been convicted of major felonies in some states. The decline of voter participation has always been a debate in the public arena. According to McDonald and Popkin, it is “the most important, most familiar, most analyzed, and most conjectured trend in recent American political history (2001, 963)” The question is, how important is voter

America has been acknowledged as being one of the world’s leading democracies, but to continue implementing the use of the Electoral College creates some distortion to that title. The out of date system does not accurately portray democracy. Theoretically, a democracy is government system that is ruled by the people. In reality, an individual’s vote may not matter depending on the state they reside in. Robert Dahl, a Democratic Theorist stated, “every member must have an equal and effective opportunity to vote, and all votes must be counted as equal.” Political equality is important to the distribution of power. Even if a person is wealthy and of power their vote should be counted the same as someone in poverty.

Equal rights have long been sought out by the people of America and they continue to be chased after today. Several of our freedoms were originally seen by the Constitutional to be inalienable, so ingrained in what the founding fathers saw as American values that the Bill of Rights has set them in stone. Unfortunately for some, universal suffrage was not one of those rights. While voting was largely limited at the founding of America, citizens, namely white males, slowly gained the right to vote without discrimination towards age or social status. However, women remained barred from the ballot, regardless of race. Though the suffrage movement started as a woman’s social movement, it evolved into a driving force that would hold the power to put in place a nineteenth constitutional amendment.

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.

Woodrow Wilson, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Susan B. Anthony share a common purpose in their addresses advocating women’s suffrage.Wilson’s Address to the Senate on the Nineteenth Amendment expresses the opinion he holds about the lack of control over women being able to vote; he prioritizes the use of logos to create an argument consisting of present fact and his own belief of how the rest of the world will see them as a nation if they do not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Catt’s The Crisis analyzes her present issue of the acknowledgement of women’s suffrage. Catt explains that through the acknowledgement of women’s suffrage, women have been given more freedom, yet not the same equality as men. Catt wants more than just exceptions to social rules, she wants people to understand that a woman is not only an imperative cog in the societal machine, but equality should never be a crisis again. Susan B. Anthony wastes no time getting to the point in On Women’s Right to Vote; she instantly begins her speech with a strong denial of allegations thrown her way and moves right in to speak about the government basing a law off the sex of a person and how the government is not treated as a democracy. Through each of these addresses Wilson, Catt, and Anthony are divided by their point of view and united by their cause, yet only Carrie Chapman Catt’s address holds the most effective reasoning.

Ignorant women are not so ignorant after all. Women in the United States fought for over twenty years, from 1895 to 1915, for women’s suffrage. Women never gave up and showed their strength by overcoming any obstacle that tried to stop them from voting. Anna Howard Shaw was a one of the leaders of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. On June 21, 1915 Shaw was the voice of the American woman and gave a speech to the men of New York before Election Day in November. In “The Fundamental Principle of a Republic” the rhetorical principles of ethos, anecdote, and hypophora are utilized to persuade the men of New York that women have the right to vote.

To begin with, the American political system developed into a more involved citizen base. According to Document 6, the pattern of voter turnout rose exponentially from in 1828. We also saw another great increase in voting in 1840. This rise in participation can be accredited to the domestic issues that impacted America during the 1820s [Document 1]. One can also point out that the increase in voter participation can be directly linked to women’s suffrage. Women were oppressed during those times; they ached for equality [Document 7].

With all adversities that was overcome the right to vote remains one of the few things that makes us all equal. No matter your color, wealth, gender, and religion. We all get one vote; which is one of the many beauties of our democracy. With this right comes a great deal of responsibilities that many citizens

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 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.

Since the United States of America established itself as its own self-governing country, one of the things that caused it to be salient and stand out from other countries is its relentless insistence on functioning as a democracy. Wars and protests have occurred so that every type of people, whether it was women or African Americans, may be granted the right to vote. Having a say in the American government is an honor and a privilege bestowed upon American citizens when they reach the age of eighteen. However, in recent years, statistics have shown that voter turnout and participation in recent elections has been rapidly and steadily declining, causing the United States to have the lowest voter participation in the world (“Is the System

In this essay, I would like to discuss the major obstacles to voting, recent changes to overcome voting barriers and the political influence of changed rules. Low turnout in the U.S. reflects that there are obstacles for people to voting and changes to overcome these obstacles may also bring new problems to different social groups. I will elaborate on these aspects in the following parts.

The United States of America is one of the oldest contemporary democracies, is currently the second largest democracy, and is ranked the 16th best democracy in the world (Campbell et. Al, 2014). Yet there is a legitimate question over whether or not the United States can still truly be considered a democracy, with some studies even suggesting it has begun to resemble an oligarchy (Chumley, 2014). In this essay, I will use Dahl’s criteria of voting equality and effective participation to determine whether or not the United States are truly a democracy.