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 won that right, along with other adult women, when the Nineteenth Amendment 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 these illegal barriers to voting for black citizens were destroyed and the tide of disenfranchisement of African Americans was reversed. This led to tremendous political gains 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 more difficult for people without a 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 cards required by the state.

Since 2008, some states have adopted these new rules regarding state-issued ID cards on the grounds that they will prevent voter fraud. Yet there is little to 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 the vote of eligible voters by making it inconvenient to obtain such a card, and to threaten others that they should not vote because they may be accused of ” 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, seniors, and students who may only have school or college ID cards. university. Before we as a society accept this need to suppress the vote, it would be wise to learn a bit more about the history of disenfranchisement.

The right to vote in federal elections is determined by the electoral laws in force in one’s state of residence. At least 46 states prohibit inmates serving a felony sentence from voting. Thirty-two other states deny the vote to people on probation or parole for a felony. In several states and the District of Columbia, convicted felons may not 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 carried over to Europe. In medieval times in Europe, the infamous offenders suffered civil death which meant the deprivation of all rights, the confiscation of property and even death. In England, civil disqualifications intended to demote offenders and isolate them from the community were achieved by declarations of prosecution, i.e. a person convicted of a felony was subject to forfeiture of their property to the king and considered civilly dead .

English colonists 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, criminal deprivation of rights was among those retained. By the mid-19th century, nineteen of the then thirty-four existing states barred serious offenders from voting.

The exclusion of convicted felons from the vote took on new meaning after the Civil War and the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment which gave blacks the right to vote. Although there were previously laws 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 offenses were written to include offenses that blacks were alleged to commit more frequently than whites, and to exclude offenses that whites were believed to commit more frequently. As an example, in South Carolina, among the disqualifying offenses were several that legislators considered “the Negro” to be especially prone to: robbery, adultery, arson, wife beating, burglary, 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 non-profit organization based in Washington, DC, has published a study that estimates the impact of felony disenfranchisement means that approximately thirteen percent percent of adult black 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 thinking Americans stop compounding this injustice by passing voter ID laws that will further stifle the votes of inner-city African-Americans, young Hispanic voters, senior citizens, and students who may only have ID cards. of the school or university on the fake pages and pretextual assumption that this will prevent voter fraud.