Voting rights and disenfranchisement

The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave black men the right to vote five years after the Civil War ended. Black women gained that right, along with other adult women, when the Nineteenth Amendment was passed thirty years later. However, having the right on paper and being able to exercise it were two different things for many years. In the late 1800s and through much of the early 20th century, African Americans were systematically disenfranchised in many parts of the country through blatant intimidation, poll taxes, literacy tests, or threats of lynching.

With the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, many of those illegal barriers to voting for black citizens were destroyed and the tide of disenfranchisement of African Americans was reversed. This led to tremendous political advances by African Americans in the United States, culminating in the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Since that historic election, several states have passed laws in their states that make things difficult for people without a type government specific. photo identification card issued to vote. Those affected by this new wave of disenfranchisement will likely primarily affect inner-city African Americans, young Hispanic voters, seniors, and students who may have school or college ID cards but not state-mandated cards.

Since 2008, some states have adopted these new rules regarding state-issued identification cards on the basis that they will prevent voter fraud. However, there is little or no evidence in the United States of widespread voter fraud in our national elections. Instead, it appears that the reasons for these new voter ID laws are to suppress eligible voters from voting by making it inconvenient to obtain such a card and to threaten others that they should not vote because they may be charged with ” electoral fraud”. and be sent to jail. Once again, it appears that such ID card laws are aimed at suppressing the votes of inner-city African Americans, young Hispanic voters, senior citizens, and students who may have only state ID cards. school or university. Before we as a society accept this need to suppress the vote, it would be wise to learn a little more about the history of disenfranchisement.

The right to vote in federal elections is determined by the electoral laws in effect in one’s state of residence. At least forty-six states prohibit prisoners serving a sentence for a felony from voting. Thirty-two other states deny people on parole or felony parole the vote. In several states and the District of Columbia, convicted felons cannot vote for up to ten years after their conviction. This means that more than half a million African-American men may never be eligible to vote in their lifetime.

Disenfranchisement in the US is the legacy of ancient Greek and Roman traditions brought to Europe. In medieval Europe, infamous offenders suffered civil death involving deprivation of all rights, confiscation of property, and even death. In England, civil disqualifications intended to demote offenders and isolate them from the community were achieved by prosecutable declarations, that is, a person convicted of a felony was subject to confiscation of his property from the king and considered civilly dead. .

English settlers brought these concepts to the New World. With independence from England, the newly formed states rejected some of the civil disabilities inherited from Europe. However, deprivation of criminal rights was among those withheld. By the mid-19th century, nineteen of the then thirty-four existing states excluded serious offenders from voting.

The exclusion of convicted felons from voting took on a new meaning after the Civil War and the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment which gave blacks the right to vote. Although laws previously existed that excluded felons from voting in the South, between 1890 and 1910 many Southern states adapted their criminal disenfranchisement laws to increase the effect of these laws on black citizens. Disenfranchisement crimes were written to include crimes that blacks were thought to commit more often than whites and to exclude crimes that whites were thought to commit more often. As an example, in South Carolina, among the disqualifying crimes were several to which lawmakers considered “the Negro” to be especially prone: robbery, adultery, arson, wife beating, breaking and entering, and attempted rape. . By contrast, crimes such as murder and fighting, to which the white man was presumed to be as willing as the black, were significantly omitted from the list.

This is a sad and hateful story about disenfranchisement. As a result of felony disenfranchisement, the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC, has released a study that estimates the impact of felony disenfranchisement means that approximately thirteen per percent of black adult men are unable to vote as a result of a current decision. or prior felony adjudication. This has been a shameful way for Americans to suppress the voting rights of African Americans in the United States.

It’s time thoughtful Americans don’t compound this injustice by passing voter ID laws that will further suppress the votes of inner-city African Americans, young Hispanic voters, senior citizens, and students who may have only ID cards. of the school or university on the fake pages and the pretextual assumption that this will prevent voter fraud.