The Time to Demand an Affirmative Right to Vote is Now
Let's end the voting wars and finally guarantee each citizen our most sacred right.
Politicians and the wealthy picking their preferred voters from the start
One of our great American myths is that every citizen has the right to vote. The myth does have a veneer of truth; of course, the States cannot deny the right to vote to any U.S. Citizen on account of race, sex, or age (beyond the 18 year minimum), other than people convicted of a crime if the State so chooses, and there are no competency tests such as literacy or English proficiency.
Underneath the veneer though are lots of barriers: the voter must register with the state, some states have voter ID laws, many states ban felons currently serving a prison sentence and even those who have completed their time, and probably the oddest of all, Election Day is a Tuesday! I don’t know about you, but I’m usually at work on Tuesday.
So, how did our super special democratic representative constitutional republic come to be without an affirmative right to vote? Well, that was by design to make sure only the white men with property would have the franchise. And it was brilliantly accomplished with slight of hand.
You see, in the Constitution, Article I, Section 2, the Founders divined, “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.” (Don’t worry, the Founders never thought we’d be voting for Senators or the Electors to the Electoral College to choose the President. Those rights were reserved to the state legislatures and executives.)
The not-so-dirty little secret was that in 12 of the 13 United States under the Articles of Confederation, only white males over a certain age who were propertied (either through land or could prove they had a certain amount of money) could vote. During this period, New Jersey nominally allowed women to vote and there were a few elections in New York that showed women had cast votes.
In other words, the Founders knew they were limiting the franchise for the “People’s House” to the only humans they thought of as full people: white men with property.
And what’s absent in the Constitution itself, Alexander Hamilton makes clear in multiple essays of The Federalist Papers, that the architects of the Constitution only expected the propertied, the manufacturer and the professional classes to be able to vote for the House of Representatives. Moreover, Hamilton says only these people should be able to run for any office at the local, state and federal level. Don’t worry though, he does say that maybe some lower class person might get elected, but don’t expect that to ever be anything other than the exception.
By the way, after 1800, the New York voter rolls showed no more elections where women had cast votes. And by 1844, New Jersey cleared things up by updating the State constitution to only allow men to vote.
But what about the 15th, 17th, 19th, 24th and 26th amendments?!?!
Amendments 15, 19 and 26 do not provide an affirmative right to vote to all citizens. They simply say that the States cannot discriminate the franchise based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude, on account of sex, or account of age once a citizen turns 18.
The 17th Amendment allows voters to choose their Senators. And the 24th Amendment abolishes poll taxes and of withholding the franchise from anyone owing other taxes.
Let’s just say while those were all good steps, they leave room for a lot of chicanery by the States to continue to make it hard for citizens, especially certain classes of citizens to vote. Hence, requiring us voters to register, voter ID laws, voting on Tuesdays, and disenfranchising felons. Additionally, the Courts, especially conservative jurists, are fond of ignoring the clear language in the 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments that Congress shall have the power to enforce these articles by appropriate legislation.
Stand Up and Claim What’s Yours with a Constitutional Amendment
So how do we the people guarantee that we choose our representatives at the ballot box instead of our representatives choosing their voters before the election? Well, we start a movement at the local and state levels that works to become a national demand to amend the Constitution with an affirmative right to vote.
I’m not an actual writer of Constitutional Amendments, but I thought here I’d cosplay as one and offer the following:
Any natural born citizen or naturalized citizen that is 18 years or older on election day has the absolute right to vote in a municipal, county, local board, regional board, state and federal election. There are no exceptions to this right to vote, including for prisoners, former prisoners, debtors or any other classification of citizen.
It’s pretty barebones, but it starts to get the idea across. If you’d like to review a much more thorough idea for an affirmative right to vote amendment, then I recommend checking out Richard L. Hasen’s A Real Right to Vote, How A Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy.
How should this affirmative right to vote be implemented? Well, on the day you receive your birth certificate from your local county recorder, you should also receive your federal voter number. And on your 18th birthday, that federal voter number is automatically activated allowing you to vote in any election for the locale or district where you have established residency. So simple!
If you’re a naturalized citizen, on the day your naturalization, congratulations, you receive your federal voter number! If you’re not yet 18 when you’re naturalized, well, when that day does come, your voter number is automatically activated, just as if you were born here. And if you’re naturalized on your 18th birthday or later, well, on that day you get your federal vote number and are immediately eligible to vote in the locale or district where you have established residency.
The residency requirement should be 30-days in one locale or district. Now, you can’t go moving every 30-days and voting in primary after primary for an office that you already vote. So, the cool thing about a database is that the votes can be tracked and such illicit acts caught immediately and the second votes be disallowed. And you can’t go early voting in one locale or district and try to establish residency in another district and vote on election day for the same election. Again, something a database of all federal voter numbers will easily foil.
The cure for our sacred right to vote is an affirmative guaranteed right to vote for all citizens 18 years and older in the Constitution of the United States. Additionally, election day should move to Saturday and Sunday, and there should be a consistent early voting period of as short as 2 weeks to as long as 4 weeks in every election at the local, state and federal level. Additionally, mail-in voting should be the law of the land for every election, along with in-person voting for the voting period. Perhaps one day, we even vote online.
Let’s move this forward and strengthen our republic and our democracy. No fear, only love.