Federal Government’s Role: Right to Vote as the Vehicle

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Problem statements of the U.S. Suffrage
Some words regarding the fourteenth amendment
Constitutional amendments regarding suffrage
Case laws regarding suffrage
African american suffrage
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Actually, Suffrage is the foundation of Democracy. Suffrage means the right to vote, it is a very valuable right of a citizen in a democratic setup. It is this right that enables the people to have a government of their own choice. Without such a right, the people are bound to be helpless and democracy loses all its meaning.These rights belong to the people by virtue of their membership of the state. The constitution of the US confers the right to vote upon no one. “That right comes to the citizens of the United States, when they possess it at all, under state laws, and as a grant of state sovereignty” (Charlton, July 1907). States establish for their own people the rules of suffrage ,and it is in state constitutions and laws, and in the decisions of state courts, that’s the rules and principles are to be looked for which govern such elections. Suffrage is never a necessary accompaniment of state citizenship, and the great majority of citizens are always excluded, and are represented by others at the polls. Sometimes, also, suffrage is given to “those who are not citizens; as, have merely declared their Intention to become citizens” (Blodgett, January 1889).

The US constitution contains that Article I, section-4: “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof…” (Washington, 1838, p.89). Another section of the same Article contains that-“………the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays…”(Madison, 1999, p.547). Article ii, Section 1 of the USA Constitution: “contains that the electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves…” Another Article -5 of the USA Constitution contains that –“…….no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.”

Problem statements of the U.S. Suffrage

From the above Articles which knowledge is derived, that is, if one state does not cast its vote to the senate, the senate can not do anything, because every state is the representative of that very state’s people. So, to use this right the federal government can do many things. But it is a very little because in the US original Constitution nothing contains about suffrage but the above. By various amendments, movements, special legislation and so on, it contains many provisions and sections which actually extend the role of the Federal government from the original intent of the US Constitution. These are especially as follows:

To discuss about the suffrage, at first, which question arises that, why is during adopting the Constitution, the right to determine suffrage conferred to the states?

Firstly, it is seamed that to minimize the arbitrariness of the senate, that process is retained in the hand of the states. If the Senate tries to pass or take any laws which violate the specific group’s rights or the minorities’ rights then the very state can exercise her power not to give the vote.

Secondly, as it is a federal state, the activities and functions of it are very large, so, to minimize the functions of the senate and to maximize the activities of the states, besides, if the senate takes the whole things which are the functions of the House of the representatives, to think about the fact, perhaps, it is retained in the hand of the states.

Thirdly, what it seemed, suffrage is the right of the citizens, as in the main Constitution no rights are contained, so, it be irrelevant to take the suffrage in the main constitution but latter other rights are taken including the suffrage by various amendments.

Fourthly, as world is changeable and all states are not in the same category, all are different from each other according to their geography, weather, territory, population, culture, behavior and so on. So, the same law is not appropriate for the all states. To determine a Law for the all states will be a work of fool, because, the center of the election, the number of polling and returning officers, booths depend on the state’s territory, population and other matters related to elections. How is it rational, don’t know, but it is a logical in the favor that, why is the right to vote given to the state?

Some words regarding the fourteenth amendment

At first by the Fourteenth Amendment there have been taken the voting right of the people in a limited age. Fourteenth Amendment was adopted to impose new restraints on state sovereignty when state powers had nearly succeeded in destroying the National Sovereignty. The second clause of the Fourteenth Article of the Amendment was intended to influence the states to bring about by their voluntary action the same result that is now accomplished by the Fifteenth Amendment.

It provided that when the right to vote was denied to any of the male inhabitants of a state, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, or any way abridged except for participation in crime, the basis of representation in Congress should be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens should bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state. (Justice Learning, n.d. and The New York Times, 01 January 2001).

By this, the purpose was to induce the States to admit colored freemen to the privilege of suffrage by reducing the representation and influence of the States in the Federal Governments, in case they refused. No opportunity occurred for testing the efficacy of this plan previous to the adoption of the Fifteenth Article, and it can not therefore the affirmed whether it would or would not have been successful. Important questions, however, may still arise under it, the provision is general; it is not limited to freedom, but it applies wherever the right to vote is denied to male citizens of proper age, or is abridged for other cause than for participation in crime. By this amendment the male, age of 21 years, had got the right to vote, there was no indication that the African American could be deprived or not. So, it can be said that it did not restrict to cast vote or restrict to cast vote. But impliedly restrict to cast vote because there was no law to permit the voting right of the African American people, so, normally it was considered that the African American people were prohibited to cast vote.

Constitutional amendments regarding suffrage

As is known to all that the U.S. Constitution does not confer any natural right, there, the voting right is impossible to contain in it, by many amendments the right to vote is included in the U.S constitution, which is counted as the operative part of the constitution. “The United States gained its independence from Great Britain; the Constitution gave the states the right to decide who could vote” (Fun Trivia, n.d.). Individually, the states began to abolish property requirements and adult white males could vote. Suffrage has been gradually extended to include many people, and the U.S. Constitution has been amended several times for this purpose. (Encyclopedia of Everyday Law, n.d.). Here, one thing is necessary to say about the women’s suffrage, Women’s right to vote was not easily won. It took many decades of political demonstration and protest before such a right became part of U.S. law. The struggle for women’s right to vote began in the middle of the nineteenth century. “A movement arose that included several generations of woman suffrage supporters” (Encyclopedia of Everyday Law, n.d.).

On the basis of this movement, the nineteenth amendment in 1920 was taken, which provides that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. In the next time, by the Twenty-fourth Amendment, in 1964, it contains that, the right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election (Deafvote, 2005-07) … shall not be denied or abridged… by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax (Ely, October 2001). And, in 1971, by the Twenty-sixth Amendment, it is contained that

According to the fifteen Amendment of the USA Constitution, [t]he right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age (Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1870).

By the twenty-sixth Amendment, it is recognized that all the persons attained the age of 18 years can be able to cast vote. Here, the principle of universal suffrage is applied. But the every state takes its laws according to its own choice, which does not follow that very principle.

Case laws regarding suffrage

To establish any principle regarding the political right there needs the judicial decision, there are many judicial decisions regarding the suffrage. In Reynolds v. Sims Case in 1964 the Supreme Court of the USA declared about suffrage, that, “To the extent that a citizen’s right to vote is debased, he is that much less a citizen” (Reames, January 1980). The weight of a citizen’s vote cannot be made to depend on where he lives (Anzalone, 2002). p.85). A citizen, a qualified voter, is no more or no less so because he lives in the city or on the farm. (Kommers, Finn, and Jacobsohn. 2004, p.392). This is the clear and strong command of our Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause (Anzalone, 2002). p.153). In Williams v. Mississippi (1898) 170U.S. 213, the court said that “The constitution provides for the payment of a poll tax, and by a section of the code its payment can’t be compelled by a seizure and sale of property. We gather from the brief of counsel that its payment is a condition of the right to vote, and, in a case to test whether its payment was or was not optional…. (Williams V. State Of Mississippi, 1898). In the case of Gougar v. Timberlake, 37N.E ( Ind.) 644;, the court said that suffrage must come to the individual, not as a right, but as a regulation which the State establishes as a means of perpetuating its own existence, and of insuring to the people the blessings it was intended to secure.

African american suffrage

There are many states that deny the right to vote of the African American, among them, the state of Connecticut denies the right of suffrage to all who can not read, and Massachusetts and Missouri to all who cannot both read write; and many of the states admit no one to be privilege of suffrage unless he is a taxpayer. So in the majority of the states a citizen absents therefrom, though in the public service, cannot vote, because the state requires as a condition the personal presence of the voter at the polls of his municipality. In colonial period, the right to vote was conferred only to the Native Americans but not to all only who was the owner of the property and pay tax.

The African Americans were deprived of it, in the next time by taking many Amendments and Acts and movements, the right to vote is conferred to the African American. In 1890, Southern states pass laws planned to limit the voting rights of African Americans. Some of the laws involve voters paying a poll tax or proving that they can read and write. Voting Rights Act-1965 forbids literacy tests as a voting requirement and bars all racist voting exercises in all states. At first the age of the voters was twenty-one years but by The Twenty-Sixth Amendment, in1971, it is reduced to 18 and gives all Americans the right to vote. Here one thing is clear that by this Amendment the all Americans have got the suffrage, they may be the Native or African.

Without a hesitation, it is considered that the most dramatic and controversial developments in the history of U.S. voting rights expansion involve the movement to grant suffrage to women and African Americans. For African Americans, this includes a long history of ensuring unconstrained access to the polls in order to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

Besides, by the stop of the Civil War, throughout the country, suffrage had become a possibility for African Americans. In July 1964, there passed the Civil Rights Act was to solve the problem of African Americans being denied the vote in the Deep South. The legislation stated that consistent “standards must prevail for establishing the right to vote” WBDG, 2008). ”Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in these countrymen and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes” (Mauldin,1964).

In the first stage of 1950s a number of school desegregation cases are filed in the federal courts by bold students and parents who danger life and property by opposing the isolation system. In 1954 these cases are consolidated and won with the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v Board of Education. “African-Americans opposed to segregation boycott the city busses, in 1955 and 1956, and at last they were successful. Hundreds of voting-rights lawsuits are filed in state and federal courts.” (Webspinner, n.d.). The newly created Joint Committee on Reform reported that the ex-Co-conspirator “states were in a state of civil disorder, and hence, had not held valid elections” (The Columbia Encyclopaedia, 2001). It also maintained that reform was a congressional, not an executive, function. The original solidified their position by winning the elections of 1866. When every Southern state except Tennessee refused to approve the Fourteenth Amendment and protect the rights of its African American people, the phase was set for more ruthless channels.

Conclusion

Finally it is held that which right was derived from the original constitution of the USA, that has been expanded by the various amendments and which is used as a vehicle of the Federal Governments. It has been seen that not only by the constitutional Amendments but by the special Act, movements, by the prominent case laws and by the comments of the prominent figures. Besides these nothing is found regarding the issue.

References

Anzalone, A. Christopher. (2002). Supreme Court Cases on Political Representation 1887-2001. M.E. Sharpe.

Blodgett, H. James. (1889). Suffrage and Its Mechanism in Great Britain and the United States. American Anthropologist, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jan., 1889), pp. 63-74.

Charlton, Paul. (1907), Naturalization and Citizenship in the Insular Possessions of the United States. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 30, American Colonial Policy and Administration. pp. 104-114.

Deafvote. (2005-07). Why should you vote? Web.

Ely, Hart John. (October 2001). Interclausal Immunity. Virginia Law Review, Vol. 87, No. 6 (2001), pp. 1185-1199.

Encyclopedia of Everyday Law. (n.d.). Voting Rights. Web.

Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1870.

Fun Trivia. (n.d.). What were the voting restrictions in colonial New Hampshire? Web.

Gougar v. Timberlake, 37N.E ( Ind.) 644.

Justice Learning. (n.d.). Fourteenth Amendment – The Text. Web.

Kommers, P. Donald. Finn, E. John. Jacobsohn. J Gary. (2004). American Constitutional Law: Essays, Cases, and Comparative Notes. Rowman & Littlefield.

Madison, James. (1999). The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787. The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

Mauldin, Bill. (1964). Spartacus Educational. Web.

Reames, J. Andrew. (1980). Holt Civic Club v. City of Tuscaloosa: Extraterritorials Denied the Right to Vote. California Law Review, Vol. 68, No. 1. pp. 126-152.

Reynolds v. Sims Case (1964).

The Columbia Encyclopaedia, (2001). Sixth Ed. Columbia University Press. Web.

The New York Times. (2001). The North Carolina Suffrage. Web.

Washington, George. (1838). Monuments of Washington’s patriotism: containing a Facsimile of US Constitution. Oxford University.

WBDG (Whole Building Design Guide). (2008). Milestones of Accessible Design Requirements 2008, National Institute of Building Sciences. Web.

Webspinner. (n.d.). Voting Rights History: Two Centuries of Struggle. Webspinner. Web.

Williams V. State Of Mississippi, 170 U.S. 213 (1898). U.S. Supreme Court. Web.

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