For many years, the right to vote in the United States has been a contentious issue. From the time the first American presidential election was held, voting was controlled by the legislative body of every state, and balloting was reserved for white male landowners aged 21 years and above. However, changes relating to the right to vote began during the Civil War era. The Fifteenth Amendment and the enactment of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 accelerated individual fundamental freedom, including the right to vote.
The amendment extended the right to vote to people of color, former slaves, and women. The laws prohibited poll tax and lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 years. Although there has been immense progress concerning the right to vote, systematic inequality is still evident in the United States democracy. The new measures, such as stringent voter identification (ID) being currently implemented by different states, demonstrate that the VRA and other similar legal protections are still relevant.
Significant progress has occurred in the field of voting in the United States because of constitutional amendments and stipulations of the VRA. The fruit of the long battle fought by the civil rights activists can be seen through the reform in voting rights. Solomon, Maxwell, and Castro (2019) note that the civil rights movement was launched to fight for the rights of the people of color, including the right to vote as guaranteed by the Constitution. The Fifteenth Amendment, in particular, dictates that the right to vote shall not be denied or infringed based on individual race or color and gives the Congress authority to implement this right (Supreme Court of the United States, 2012).
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Nonetheless, to date, the right to vote is still not guaranteed. Incidents of voter suppression were witnessed in the recent presidential elections. In 2016, a ruling made by a court in Wisconsin, in a case filed by a conservative organization, ordered the removal of more than 200,000 people from the voter register (Goodnam & Moynihan, 2020). In his article “The Real Voting Scandal of 2016,” Toobin (2016) notes that after the Supreme Court’s controversial decision regarding Shelby County v. Holder, 2013, several states affiliated to the Republican Party started rewriting their election laws to curtail the opportunities for the people of color and the democrats to vote. The above circumstances illustrate that systematic inequalities exist today. Therefore, the right to vote deserves protection by the Constitution as well as statutes such as the VRA.
The stringent measures for voter registration being exhibited by several states are an infringement of the right to vote. In the past few years, since the 2013 Supreme Court decision, various states that were previously covered by Section 5 of the VRA have been implementing new rules intended to govern the voting exercise in their jurisdictions. They include strict requirements for voter identification during the voting process. The proponents of these procedures argue that they are intended to prevent voter fraud, but they are meant to limit the chances of voting for the people of color and the poor.
Goodman and Moynihan (2020) argue that in the 2018 gubernatorial race in Georgia, more than 500,000 voters were purged from the voters’ rolls just months before the election. This demonstrates the dire consequences of stringent measures that states such as Georgia have implemented. Strict voter identification laws have been associated with a decrease in voter turn-out. A comparison made between the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota indicated a lower turn-out in Wisconsin compared to Minnesota, which had no voter identification laws (Goodman & Moynihan, 2020). They further note that the low turn-out was worst in counties with a larger African American population. Thus, strict voter ID laws seem to be meant to intentionally discriminate against people of color.
The Chief Justice’s depiction of the history of voting rights in America is inaccurate. The right to vote in the United States remains an issue that has not been addressed conclusively. Richomme (2015) notes that following the Supreme Court ruling, provisions such as online voter registration and same-day registration were removed in some of the states, although such requirements had increased the means through which voters could register for elections. While it may be challenging to evaluate the adverse impact of strict voter ID measures on the people of color, it is evident that restricting people’s right to vote is against the principles of democracy.
Strict voter ID requirements, which have resulted from the Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County vs. Holder, are a violation of the right of individuals to vote. Hence, they are against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the provisions of the VRA. They seem to indirectly and intentionally discriminate against the people of color and the poor and discourage them from participating in the elections. In a country that is often referred to as the “free world,” all citizens must be accorded equal rights, including the power and freedom to vote regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or political affiliation. Therefore, the laws that promote the right to vote, including the VRA, must be upheld as they guarantee the protection of this right.
References
- Goodman, A., & Moynihan, D. (2020). The struggle to vote in the U.S.: From the suffragettes to today’s voting rights advocates, securing the right to vote should be a common pursuit of us all. Common Dreams. Retrieved from https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/01/02/struggle-vote-us.
- Richomme, O. (2015). The Voting Rights Act at 50: From voter participation to meaningful representation. Trans Atlantica, 1-9. Retrieved from http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/7465.
- Solomon, D., Maxwell, C., & Castro, A. (2019). Systematic inequality and American democracy. Center for American Progress. Retrieved from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/473003/systematic-inequality-american-democracy/.
- Supreme Court of the United States. (2012). Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, Attorney General, et al.
- Toobin, J. (2016). The real voting scandal of 2016. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/12/the-real-voting-scandal-of-2016.
