Article by Amelia Matheson, photograph by Tiffany Tertipes

This election is arguably the most unprecedented election in American history. If not, it is second only to the Election of 1824. This year, Former Vice President Joseph Biden and President Donald Trump as well as their respective campaigns have spent millions of dollars encouraging their supporters to vote. With various PSAs airing on TV to inform Americans about voting strategies, many of us are asking why there seems to be a sudden need for these ads.

The thing is, COVID-19 has kept us inside our homes for most of the year, causing standing in a line at a voting station to have little appeal. Mailing in one’s ballet seemed like the most logical thing to do this year. However, the USPS underwent dramatic changes in June under Trump-appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, which altered some Americans' faith in mail-in-voting. Yet people are still determined to vote in the 2020 election. Voting is our constitutional right even though it was not previously guaranteed to all of us. On the long road to universal voting rights, America has learned the value of each and every voice.

Our Founding Fathers did not initially include the “right to vote” in the original Constitution. It seems like it should have fit under the First Amendment right to free speech. James Madison felt that only land-owning, white men should be allowed to vote as they would be the best demographic to protect democracy. It wasn’t until after the Civil War and the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 that voting privileges were expanded to include all men. It states: “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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” With this, the privilege of voting was made a right protected by the Constitution. African American men, enslaved for generations, were finally allowed to vote in national elections. Or so they thought…

Enter the Jim Crow South. It is needless to say that the Southern states were not pleased with the implications of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. So, lawmakers wrote a multitude of discriminatory laws to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote. These included literacy tests, poll taxes, the “grandfather clause”, and many other loopholes the states strategically designed to exclude black voices from the polls. The federal government did little during this time to control the actions of Southern states.

Then, in the early 1900s, millions of women rose up and demanded the right to vote. Prior to this, a group of women led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott gathered in 1848 New York for the Seneca Falls Convention. They believed women possesed the same God-given rights as men which naturally included the right to vote. However, the movement lost energy when the Civil War broke out. As the twentieth century approached, women took up the torch once again and pushed for the right to vote. The National American Woman Suffrage Association was born in 1890 with Stanton as president. Years later, under the leadership of the famous Carrie Chapman Catt, the association made a “winning plan” to mobilize similar groups across the nation. On August 18, 1920, the Nineteen Amendment granting women the right to vote was added to the Constitution. Also, in 1924, Native Americans were finally granted citizenship and the right to vote with the Indian Citizenship Act. Representative Udall Luján introduced the Native American Voting Rights Act in 2019, which was meant to protect the existing voting rights of Native Americans. The bill has since been referred to the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties.

In the mid 1950s, the Civil Rights Movement began, reminding America of the eighty-year-old check African Americans long deserved to cash. Civil rights hero Martin Luther King King Jr. led a very successful civil disobedience campaign to obtain civil rights for millions of black citizens. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 enforced the Fifteenth Amendment by prohibiting the use of discriminatory laws that abridged African Americans’ right to vote.

America has indeed come a long way to effectively guarantee the right to vote for all citizens. However, as in everything, there is always room for improvement. Today, many experience the consequences of voter suppression; many counties do not have enough voting locations to accommodate their populations and citizens everywhere are facing long lines up until and on Election Day. But, make no mistake, we are determined to cast our votes, to make our voices heard. So by November third, we will vote.

Works Cited

History.com Editors. “Women's Suffrage.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/womens-history/the-fight-for-womens-suffrage.

Library of Congress. Voting Rights for African Americans : The Right to Vote : Elections : Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress : Library of Congress. www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/elections/right-to-vote/voting-rights-for-african-americans/.

Lujan, Ben Ray. Actions - H.R.1694 - 116th Congress (2019-2020): Native American Voting Rights Act of 2019. 3 May 2019, www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1694/all-actions?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22H.+R.+83%22%5D%7D.

Marietta, Morgan. “The Right to Vote Is Not in the Constitution.” The Conversation, 21 Sept. 2020, theconversation.com/the-right-to-vote-is-not-in-the-constitution-144531.