You Have a Right to an Affirmative Right to Vote. Demand It!
Our most important voting rights document, The US Constitution, does not include an affirmative right to vote. Let's create a movement that truly enfranchises every citizen to vote in every election.
Restricting the Vote Since Day 1
The first citizens with the right to vote, white men with property, knew that restricting the franchise meant power would rest with them. Article 1, Section 2 defines voters for the House as, “Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.”
Who were the Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislatures in 1787? Why, they were exclusively white men with property. Go figure!
Amendments 15, 19 and 26 do not guarantee former slaves, women or people 18 years old and older, or any citizen, a right to vote. The crafty language used in each amendment is that their, “vote shall not be denied or abridged,” based on a characteristic.
A Universal and Guaranteed Suffrage
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 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.
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 housed in a national database. 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 are reading this, you are probably already alive, so you and me and everyone else currently a citizen will receive our federal voter number the day this new national database goes live.
If you’re a naturalized citizen, on the day of 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 is 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 voted for. So, the cool thing about a database is that who votes when and where can be tracked and such illicit acts caught immediately. The first legitimate vote counts, the second illegitimate vote is 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 days will move to a full weekend covering Saturday and Sunday. There also will be a consistent early voting period of 4 weeks in every election at the local, state and federal level. Finally, mail-in voting will 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 forward and strengthen our republic and our democracy with a Constitutional affirmative right to vote.
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