“We the People, of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union…” – Preamble, US Constitution
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” – Martin Luther King
More Perfect
It is an intentional grammatical error in the Constitution, where Madison sets the goal for the new Republic the Founding Fathers were creating: forming a more perfect Union. Madison didn’t make a mistake, nor was it a criticism of what they wrought in creating the government. It was common sense, that while they were creating something brand new in the world, that from the birth they needed to strive to perfect it even more. Newborns are almost always perfect, yet parents continue to make them “more perfect” throughout childhood. So should the citizens of these United States.
And one of the most important “perfections” was in the right to vote. As the Fathers sweltered authoring the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1786, in most of the states only twenty-one or older, white, male, Christian, freeholders (land owners) were given the franchise, the right to vote. That only consisted of twenty percent of the population. Voting was exclusive at the beginning of our representative democracy.
Freeholders
The first restriction to fall was the “freeholder” rule, but it took some time. By 1828, and the election of Democratic Populist Andrew Jackson, the vast majority of states allowed twenty-one year old white men the franchise. But it took until 1856 for the last state to abolish the property clause, North Carolina. Other groups, women and free black citizens, were pressing for the right to vote, but generally were denied the opportunity.
The next great leap in broadening the vote was the Fifteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War. It supposedly granted suffrage (the right to vote) to black men, including those freed from bondage by the war. But soon after, the “compromise” that resolved the election dispute of 1876 ended the Reconstruction era, and Jim Crow Laws were put into effect, taking away those rights. Poll taxes, grandfather clauses (you could only vote if your grandfather could) and bogus tests (how many jelly beans in the jar) all served to make sure that black men couldn’t vote. And for those who tried to anyway, there was always the Ku Klux Klan’s terror and murder to emphasize the point.
It would take until 1965, almost a century later, for the Voting Rights Act to be enacted by Congress, enabling the words of the Fifteenth to become action. One of the prime motivators of that Act, Congressman John Lewis, died last week. It isn’t ancient history.
It was in 1887 that Native Americans who chose to disassociate themselves from their tribes could become United States citizens. Prior to that they were treated as foreign nationals, though the US had little regard for their national rights. But after 1887 Native Americans could technically vote. Then states established some of the same restrictions that the Jim Crow Laws placed on Black men.
Suffrage
In 1920 the Congress and States agreed to the Nineteenth Amendment, granting suffrage to women. While this included both Black and Native American women, many states still applied the unfair restrictions. But 1920 did effectively double the number of eligible voters in the nation.
In 1924 all Native Americans, regardless of tribal status, were granted citizenship. And in 1943, in the middle of World War II and the Nisei Internment camps, Chinese immigrants who attained citizenship were granted the right to vote as well.
1961 saw the passage of the Twenty-Third Amendment, granting the District of Columbia electoral votes in Presidential elections. Prior to that, Washington DC residents had no say in the choice of President. However, the District was only granted three votes, the minimum for any state, and symbolic representation in the Congress only. There still are no Congressmen or Senators from Washington, DC.
The Twenty-Fourth Amendment banned the poll tax, taking away the strongest tool in the Jim Crow toolbox. The 1965 Civil Rights Act put teeth in laws guaranteeing minority voting rights, and the Supreme Court ruled in Harper v Virginia Board of Electors that paying taxes could not be a qualification for voting.
And finally, in 1971, the voting age was reduced from twenty-one to eighteen. This was in response to the Vietnam War protests with the slogan, “old enough to fight, old enough to vote” resonating with the American people.
Reversion
In this century, the United States has taken a different direction. While the laws remain on the books, the trend has been to make voting more difficult. Dozens have states have instituted voter identification laws, aimed at solving a voter fraud problem that doesn’t exist. In recent times, the number of actual voting frauds has been miniscule. Here in Ohio there have been fifty-one convictions for voting violations out of the many, many millions of votes cast in the last two decades. And there have been zero convictions for fraud at the polls (Heritage). But because one political side claims, “fraud is widespread”, many states require state identification cards to vote.
For suburban white America, Voter ID Laws don’t seem like an onerous requirement. Doesn’t everyone have a Driver’s License? And if they don’t drive, they can surely get a State ID card. But both the license and the ID card require fee payments, ranging from $8.50 (Ohio) to $29 (California). And it also requires time, time to go the Division of Motor Vehicles, wait in line, and apply for the card. And for those who live in the city and don’t own a car, it requires finding public transportation to the DMV or getting someone else to drive.
Lining Up
But if you really don’t want to let people vote make them wait in line for hours to cast their ballot. And the easiest way to do that is restrict the number of polling places, especially in the urban areas. Ask the voters of Atlanta. That way folks have to miss work, find childcare, and stand in the weather to vote. Somehow, by the way, that doesn’t seem to happen in the suburbs. Or in Kansas or Kentucky or Wisconsin, simply close all of the urban polling locations, and put one big one in a location accessible only to those with private transportation.
Mail-In Voting
So the mythical voter “fraud” problem is used to keep folks who live in urban areas and are less likely to drive from being able to vote. It is no mistake that those folks generally vote for one political party over the other.
That same mythical problem is now being used as a cudgel to try to prevent mail-in balloting. That’s been used in the United States since the Civil War. We call it absentee voting, here in Ohio. There have been a total of seven convictions in Ohio for absentee ballot fraud in the past twenty years (Heritage). It’s just not a thing.
Some will argue a “difference” between mail-in balloting and absentee voting. President Trump just yesterday argued that mail-in balloting in Florida is safe, but in other states is not. But in the state of Oregon, the entire election process is done by mail. Voters register with the state, and as part of that process give a signature. A few weeks before the election, those voters are mailed the ballot. Those ballots are then filled out, signed and returned, either by mail, or dropped off an official drop box (Oregon).
Oregon has had a total of fifteen voting offenses in the past twenty years (Heritage).
Here in Ohio we don’t have “mail-in” balloting. We have absentee balloting, requiring the registered voter to send a request for a ballot, then get the ballot, then return the ballot. But in Ohio, even the act of sending every registered voter an application to return to get an absentee ballot is seen as “political”. It’s as if somehow folks should “try harder” to get the ballot, but what it really smacks of is voter suppression.
Arc
The arc of American History moved for almost two hundred years towards greater inclusion and more voter participation. But in the last twenty years the arc has flattened, and worse, now that COVID has given us all an education in graphing, bent in the wrong direction. We are living in an era when some of the most powerful are interested in preventing voting, at least for those who have differing views.
I can’t think of anything that is more Un-American.
But Martin Luther King was right. The arc of the moral universe does bend towards justice. Those who are trying to restrict the vote will find that citizens will overcome the barriers, and change the rules so that every eligible citizen can take part in our government. It’s the American thing to do.
