|
Joel Packer, NEARO President
As we approach election day, it’s important to remember that, for over two hundred years, Americans have been lobbying, litigating, demonstrating, rallying, marching, and sometimes dying for the right to vote. It’s been a long, slow process to ensure that everyone, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, national origin, or disability can exercise their right to vote.
The Constitution as drafted in 1787 left voting issues to the control of individual states. Most states allowed only white, property-owning males to cast a ballot: not African Americans (most of whom were enslaved), not women, not those between 18-21 years of age, not Native Americans.
The first group of Americans to gain voting rights were actually white men—specifically working-class and poor white men who did not own property. By 1856, white men were allowed to vote in all states regardless of property ownership.
However, it took the Civil War to expand voting rights to nonwhites.
In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution granted full citizenship rights, including voting rights, to all men born or naturalized in the United States. Then in 1870, the 15th Amendment mandated that U.S. citizens could no longer be denied the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
Tragically, discriminatory laws, poll taxes, literacy tests (along with grandfather clauses that exempted white, male voters), and violent intimidation were adopted by most southern states which all but completely suppressed Black participation in elections until the 1960s.
The women's suffrage movement began alongside that of poor whites and African-American men, but it took decades longer to achieve. The 19th Amendment, which is completely identical to the 15th except that it includes women, officially become part of the Constitution on August 18, 1920, when the Tennessee legislature narrowly approved it.
Between the Civil War and World War I, Native Americans were forced to give up their tribal affiliations or join the military in order to vote. The 1924 Indian Citizenship Act redefined the language of the 14th Amendment to include Native Americans and granted full U.S. citizenship to nearly 300,000 indigenous people (about a third of the native population at the time). However, some Native Americans who were granted citizenship rights under the 1924 Act did not have had full citizenship and suffrage rights until 1948, due to restrictions imposed in seven states.
Other key voting rights expansions prior to the 1960s Civil Rights movement include the Magnuson Act (also known as the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943), which gave Chinese immigrants the right to citizenship and, thus, the right to vote; the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, which granted all people of Asian ancestry the right to become citizens, and thus vote; and the 23rd amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1961, which granted citizens of Washington, DC the right to vote for President (although DC residents still do not have voting representation in Congress).
Although African-Americans technically gained the right to vote after the Civil War, only a small percentage of southern African-Americans were allowed to perform their civic duty until the 1960s. In 1964, the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, eliminating poll taxes nationwide. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 included some voting rights protections. But, the key piece of legislation was the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibits every state and local government from imposing any voting law that results in discrimination against racial or language minorities. Since its original passage, the Voting Rights Act has been amended five times to broaden its scope of protections, such as the 1975 requirement for districts with high non-English-speaking minority populations to provide bilingual ballots and voting materials.
The 26th Amendment, ratified in July 1971, lowered the minimum voting age for federal, state, and local elections to 18. And in 1984, The Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act required polling places to be accessible to people with disabilities.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (also known as the Motor Voter Act), mandated that citizens be offered a chance to register to vote when renewing their driver's license. The 2002 Help America Vote Act addressed improvements to voting systems and voter access that were identified following the 2000 election.
Today, advocacy groups and public officials are making strides to improve voting accessibility to homeless voters, those with physical disabilities, and former felons. Nationwide, about 6 million Americans can’t vote as a result of a felony conviction. About half have fully completed their sentences, another quarter are in the community under probation or parole supervision, and a quarter are still incarcerated.
Sadly, several states are moving backward by having enacted or trying to enact new restrictions on voting, including expanded purges of voting roles, more restrictive voting ID requirements, making it more difficult to register, limiting or eliminating early voting, and closing and consolidating voting places. Overall, since 2010, 23 states have new restrictions in effect.
The fight goes on!
|
Joel Packer, President *
Gloria Constant, Vice President *
Betty Jeung, Recording Secretary
Tomás Saucedo, Membership Secretary *
Steven Martinez, Treasurer
Carol Adams
Mona Ball *
Edith Jefferson
Pat Orrange
Rafael Rivera *
John Thurston *
Teresa Rankin, Immediate Past President
Lynn Coffin, Ex Officio - Outreach Editor