The vote: A precious American legacy

Americans will head to the polls today and cast their votes in elections for local, state, and federal offices. Although the practice of voting predates the American Republic, the United States has been unique in world history with regard to political elections. When the Constitution went into effect in 1788, no other country had a government formed entirely by the consent of the governed. The principle of the sovereignty of the people has been a singular (even exceptional) feature of the United States, and this nation has served as a model of stable and effective democracy. The vote is one of the most important gifts given by Americans to the world.

Since the 18th century, the voting franchise has expanded dramatically. From the colonial period through the American Revolution, and until the early 19th century, the vote was limited to adult men who owned land as property. This sounds quite undemocratic to 21st century ears, but land was cheap and plentiful in America, opening the franchise to many potential voters. We tend to look backwards and see what early America got wrong. That’s understandable. We also must consider what was progressive or even radical by their standards as well. And, make no mistake, actions taken to expand the vote were progressive. More importantly, the Constitution established the principle of popular sovereignty, setting the stage for expansion of the franchise as the people determined was appropriate.

The framers of the Constitution left the determination of the limits of the franchise to the states. By the 1820s, some states of the Union were eliminating property requirements for voting. Andrew Jackson’s successful bids for the presidency in 1828 and 1832 were the result, not the cause, of the expansion of the franchise to all white men. Again, not perfect by a long shot, but this example shows the inherent bent toward progress built into American democracy.

One of the most dramatic expansions of the franchise took place as a result of the Civil War. The Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments abolished slavery, defined United States citizenship, and forbade the denial of the right to vote on the basis of race. And in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment recognized the right of women to vote. Eventually, the logic of the Declaration of Independence took hold.

Despite the continuing expansion of voting rights, the history of the franchise has proceeded by fits and starts. The states of the former Confederacy ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment as conditions for their readmission to the Union, and immediately set up barriers to prevent blacks from voting. Poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and voter intimidation by groups like the Ku Klux Klan allowed what the Fifteenth Amendment forbade—the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the basis of race.

Through the efforts of African Americans like Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, Carter Woodson, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Nannie Helen Burroughs, the cause of voting rights was advanced in the years prior to the Civil Rights Movement, which began in earnest in 1954. By 1965, with the ratification of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment in 1964 and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the franchise had been opened to all adult citizens, regardless of sex or race. The Twenty-Seventh Amendment (1971) reduced the age requirement for voting from 21 to 18.

As a political issue, the right to vote is particularly fraught in our own day. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional. That section of the law stipulated that states having a history of blocking the franchise to African Americans were required to “preclear” any changes to their voting rules with the Justice Department. Some citizens on the ideological left regard this ruling as a betrayal of the spirit of the Voting Rights Act.

There has also been an effort, embraced enthusiastically by the left, to undermine the Electoral College. Shortly after the 2000 presidential election, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact emerged. The NPVIC was not designed to eliminate the Electoral College, but manipulate it in a way to align the popular vote with the electoral vote. As of 2021, fifteen states and the District of Columbia have passed laws to align their electoral votes with the popular vote in future presidential elections. Those sixteen jurisdictions represent 195 electoral votes.

So, what should citizens do? Citizens should vote. Instead of bemoaning the so-called threat to democracy, we Americans should celebrate the consistent advancement of voting rights from the enactment of the Constitution, through all the major crises we have faced as a nation, until today.

The American experiment in self-government has not been perfect. Far from it. But it has been animated by its own commitment to the ideal of liberty. We should receive that ideal gratefully from those who have gone before us, and faithfully hand them down to our children and grandchildren.