EXTENDING THE RIGHT TO VOTE

Stepping inside a voting booth is perhaps the most important part of being a U.S. citizen. But the U.S. Constitution does not even address who has-or does not have the right to vote.

- Emily Claypool

The Founding Fathers initially left those decisions up to the state governments. Over the years, however, Congress has passed several amendments to the Constitution to extend voting rights to include every citizen over the age of 18. Just how did we get from white-male-landowner suffrage to where we are today? It has been a long and challenging road.

PROPERTY EQUALS POWER

Before the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the right to vote was restricted to people who owned property or paid taxes. For the most part, the only people who met those criteria were white adult men. Some colonies also enforced religious restrictions. Catholic and Jewish men often were denied the opportunity to vote.

After the United States became independent from Great Britain, most states lifted the restriction on landowning as a requirement to vote. The states felt pressure from men who did not own property but wanted the privilege of voting. Some of the men were soldiers who had fought in the war for independence. It didn’t seem fair to deny the right to vote to people who had been willing to die for the new nation. The early 1800s was a time of “universal manhood suffrage,” or the expansion of the right to vote to all white men.

Efforts to win voting rights for women and certain immigrant groups in the late 1800s were often scorned by those who had already achieved that privilege.