Moving Forward
“Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them right by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights.” - Thomas Jefferson, 1806
The Right - And Responsibility - to Vote
“The influence over government must be shared among all the people.”
Resources
TIMELINE: The right and responsibility to vote through American history.
Videos
Speakers from Monticello's annual Independence Day Naturalization Ceremony and the National Constitution Center discuss the right of all Americans to vote.
Biographies and Stories
Read stories of civic engagement and the struggle to win the vote for all citizens.
Podcasts
Listen to the story of how the right to vote evolved during the formation of the U.S. Constitution.
A Closer Look
The Idea
“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
Thomas Jefferson advocated for extending the right to vote as widely as possible.
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.
African Americans and the Vote
The 15th Amendment extended voting rights to African American men. Almost a hundred years later, the 1965 Civil Rights Act overturned "Jim Crow" laws impeding African American voting rights.
Women and the Vote
Women gained the right to vote in 1920 under the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Native Americans and the Vote
The 1924 Snyder Act provided citizenship to all Native Americans after hundreds of years of disenfranchisement.
A Civic Engagement Initiative sponsored by and in collaboration with The New York Community Trust – The Peter G. Peterson Fund. 