Right and Responsibility to Vote
“ The influence over government must be shared among all the people”
The Idea
Thomas Jefferson advocated for extending the right to vote beyond just a few members of society.
“It has been thought that corruption is restrained by confining the suffrage to a few of the wealthier of the people: but it would be more effectually restrained by an extension of that to such numbers as would bid defiance to the means of corruption.”
-Thomas Jefferson, 1785
Making the Idea a Reality
“The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations.”
- U.S. Constitution, Article I Section 4
Individual state voting laws in early U.S. history varied widely and generally restricted suffrage to those who were white males over 21 with some states imposing such requirements as owning property or passing religious qualifications. Universal white, male suffrage, which Jefferson supported, was a first step in the struggle to broaden the right to vote to all Americans.
The 15th Amendment extended voting rights to African American men, and the 1965 Civil Rights Act overturned "Jim Crow" laws impeding African American voting rights.
In July 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention kicked off a sustained campaign, led by women, to secure their voting rights. Over seventy years later, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution achieved their goal.
Native Americans faced centuries of struggle before acquiring full U.S. citizenship and legal protection of their voting rights as citizens of both tribal nations and the United States.
The National Constitution Center discusses the Constitutional history of the right to vote.
“ Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them right by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights.”
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The Art of Citizenship