In order to completely understand how far society has come and the amount of work that still must be done, in regards to being able to exercise our voting rights, we must first understand some of the voting barriers that minorities had to face in the past. It was not until 1870 that the 15th amendment was passed, declaring it unconstitutional for an individual to be denied the right to vote based on their color, race or previous condition of servitude. However, the 15th amendment only applied to male individuals, it did not guarantee the right for women to vote. Instead female voters had to wait an additional fifty years until they were granted the privilege to vote. In 1920, the 19th amendment was finally passed, stating that regardless of gender every American citizen had the right to vote.
Even though these amendments were passed, it did not fully terminate the discrimination or the struggle that the minorities had to experience, when they choose to exercise this civil right. Instead, it seemed to cause friction within the states, resulting in them developing new, creative methods that prevented minorities from voting. The first of many barriers was the white primary which started in the 1920 's and lasted until 1944, when it was declared unconstitutional and outlawed (Bardes, Shelley, Smith). The white primaries stated that only white citizens could vote in the primaries, which resulted in less representation of minorities within the government since the primaries were the elections that held the greater importance.
Next came the grandfather clause, which stated in order to vote an individual had to show proof that their grandfather had voted before 1867. This barrier was not directly discriminating against people of col...
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...e to exercise their right to vote (Cesca 2016).
Unfortunately, Arizona is not the first primary of 2016 where voters have experienced troubles. Just three days ago, on the 19th, New York residents arrived to vote at a voting site in Queens, where all three of the voting machines were broken (2016). Bad voting experiences did not just occur in Queens that day, in Brooklyn voters arrived early to vote and were shocked to find out that the polling place did not open for an additional thirty minutes after it 's declared time (2016). There were even instances where voters were turned away from polling sites because their party affiliation was changed, therefore, resulting them not to be able to vote. In regards to this, New York voters have decided to take further legal action and continue with a lawsuit, in hopes that they can still get the chance to vote (2016).
Finally the 15th Amendment was made in 1870 to assure that every person in the US had the right to vote and no one could take that right away as a result of race, color or because citizens used to be slaves.
This was the 1867 Reform Act. In 1832, the Great Reform Act was passed, this allowed most middle class men to vote, but not working class men. But, the 1867 Reform Act changed that. This Act would have led to all men who had lived at the same address for 12 months being able to vote. This meant that many more working class men were able to vote in the General elections.
The Voting Rights Act marked a significant shift in American democracy, ensuring the right to vote for all regardless of race, religion, or sex. The key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, Section IV and Section V, ensured the overview of all state mandated voting laws, safeguarding constitutional values despite racial opposition. The breaking down of this provision under Supreme Court Ruling Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, Attorney General has the potential to undo decades of progress to tackle racial barriers, isolating and withholding the right to vote for the weak, effectively dissolving democracy for the ones who need it the most. Throughout American history, people of power have isolated specific racial and gender groups and established policies to limit their right to vote. These politicians, in desperate attempt to elongate their political reign, resort to “anything that is within the rules to gain electoral advantage, including expanding or contracting the rate of political participation.
When the constitution was written, the idea of universal suffrage was too radical for our founding fathers to address. They decided to leave the states with the authority to decide the requirements for voting. (Janda) By allowing the states to decide who voted, the authors had not intended for each state's discriminations to prevent the country from maintaining true democracy. However, by not setting up a nationwide regulation, the authors launched the country into a century and a half long fight for freedom and equality for all.
.... This new amendment prohibited the states to deny the right to vote because of race.
The Redeemers developed voting rules for each state called “literacy tests,” even though they were impossible to pass and just created to get rid of African American voters. They also required a poll tax to be paid because they knew that most blacks would not have earned enough money to pay for voting. Proponents of the “New South” promoted the “Separate but Equal” motto and under this, segregation of blacks and whites became normal as long as each race had “equal” facilities (Literacy Test and Poll Tax). Even though blacks and whites
In 1965, at a time of racial discrimination in America and the emergence of a strong Civil Rights Movement, Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which prohibits discrimination in voting. Congress could not end racial discrimination in voting by suing one jurisdiction, state, etc. at a time, a lot of time. Rather, Congress passed Section 5 of the VRA, which required states and local governments with a history of racially discriminating voting practices to get the approval of the U.S. Attorney General or a three-judge panel for the U.S. District Court for D.C. (“preclearace”) in order to make any changes to their voting practices. Section 4(b) said that the preclearance requirement applied to states and political subdivisions that used a “test or device” to limit voting and in which less than 50% of the population was registered to vote, or voted, in the presidential elections of 1964, 1968, or 1972.
On August 18, 1920 the nineteenth amendment was fully ratified. It was now legal for women to vote on Election Day in the United States. When Election Day came around in 1920 women across the nation filled the voting booths. They finally had a chance to vote for what they thought was best. Not only did they get the right to vote but they also got many other social and economic rights. They were more highly thought of. Some people may still have not agreed with this but they couldn’t do anything about it now. Now that they had the right to vote women did not rush into anything they took their time of the right they had.
In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment was sign into the Constitution, granting women the rights to vote.
...t vote. (DOC H) Eventually, women reached their goal with the passage of the 19th amendment, prohibiting the denial of the right to vote based on gender, but African Americans didn’t see major change for decades to come.
The Supreme Court was known for some of the most notorious decisions made in history, many in which included the cases, Marbury v. Madison, Scott v. Sandford, and United States v. Cruikshank. Despite these cases, the court did turn around and change their perspective and helped minorities achieve their civil rights. In 1915, the case of Guinn and Beal v. United States helped African Americans reassure their right to vote. In this case the Supreme Court considered the grandfather clause to be unconstitutional. The grandfather clause was a mechanism t...
The right to vote in the United States of America had always been a very important part of its society. The 1800s had brought about a different way of voting in the United States for white American men. The qualifications were
"After 1815 Americans transformed the republic of the Founding Fathers into a democracy. State after state revoked property qualifications for voting and holding officethus transforming Jefferson's republic of property holders into Andrew Jackson's mass democracy. Democracy, however, was not for everyone. While states extended political rights to all white men, they often withdrew or limited such rights for blacks. As part of the same trend, the state of New Jersey took the vote away from propertied women, who formerly had possessed that right. Thus the democratization of citizenship applied exclusively to white men. In the mid19th century, these men went to the polls in record numbers. The election of 1828 attracted 1.2 million voters; that number jumped to 1.5 million in 1836 and to 2.4 million in 1840. Turnout of eligible voters by 1840 was well over 60 percenthigher than it had ever been, and much higher than it is now." (Remini, 1998)
In the latter half of the 18th century, freed slaves possessed the right to vote in all but three states. It was not until the 19th century that states began to pass laws to disenfranchise the black population. In 1850, only 6 out of the 31 states allowed blacks to vote. 1Following the civil war, three reconstruction amendments were passed. The first and second sought to end slavery and guarantee equal rights. The third, the 15th amendment, granted suffrage regardless of color, race, or previous position of servitude.2 The 15th Amendment monumentally changed the structure of American politics as it was no longer the privileged whites who could vote. For some it was as though hell had arrived on earth, but for others, it was freedom singing. However, the song was short lived. While many political cartoons from the period show the freedom that ex-slaves have for voting because of the 15th Amendment, they often neglect to include the fact that many African Americans were coerced into voting a certain way or simply had their rights stripped from them.
It is common knowledge that the American Civil War provided freedom and certain civil rights, including to right to vote, to the African-American population of the nineteenth-century. What is not generally known, and only very rarely acknowledged, is that after freeing the slaves held in the Southeastern portion of the U.S., the federal government abandoned these same African-Americans at the end of the Reconstruction period.2