You Get to Read It First

Wasn’t That a Time ~ Peter, Paul, & Mary

Back in May I told you that I now have the privilege and joy of writing a monthly article for my church’s newsletter. There are no restrictions on my content, so I write as the muse (or Spirit) inspires me.

Below is the article that will appear in the next newsletter. As I researched the information, I was surprised how much that I learned about a subject that I thought I knew well.

At the moment we are being inundated by TV, radio, print, and even telephone calls urging us to VOTE on November 4^th. We are told that voting is our right and obligation as citizens of this democracy. However, for many of us, this has not been historically true.

Today we Americans consider voting to be our right. Yet, in our history, it has not always been an entitlement of all U.S. citizens. For example, in many of the British North American colonies, before and after the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Jews, Quakers and Roman Catholics were not permitted to vote or to run for public office.

Poor (non-property owners) white males were prohibited from voting by property qualifications; it is estimated that during the early years of the United States perhaps as many as 50% of white males were not enfranchised. Following the American Civil War (and as late as 1908) revisions to the constitutions of eleven former Confederate states imposed poll taxes, rigid residency requirements, and literacy tests to disenfranchise the poor of all races. It was not until 1964 that poll taxes were outlawed in Federal elections.

The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, one of three adopted in response to the American Civil War, thwarted states from denying the right to vote to any male citizen at least twenty-one years old because his race. Although this was primarily meant to guard voting rights of freedmen, it also protected the voting rights of other non-white minorities, such as Mexican Americans in Texas.

Women were not allowed to vote until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment; the Presidential election of 1920 was the first in which women were enfranchised to vote. That was less than 90 years ago!

It was not until 1924 that Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship and the right to vote.

Citizens between the ages of 18 and 20 gained the right to vote in Federal elections in 1971.

So the right to vote hasn’t always been a right. Perhaps, in the coming days, when we hear someone say that they are not going to vote (for whatever reason) we need to remind them of the how special, unique, and hard won our privilege to vote is.

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

~ George Jean Nathan (1882 - 1958)