Why You Should Exercise Your Right to Vote:

America hasn’t always granted every citizen the right to vote. Women, poor people, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, new citizens and other groups have all been denied the right to vote in the past through property qualifications, religious and literacy tests, poll taxes and other exclusionary methods. Take a look at how far we have come – then celebrate how far we’ve come by exercising your right to vote!

 

Pre-1776: In every one of the 13 original colonies, only voters paying a certain amount in taxes or owning a minimum amount of property can vote.

1790: North Carolina is among six states that permit free African Americans to vote in post-Revolution America. This right will not last long.

 

1800-1850: Voice voting is replaced by written ballot and property qualifications for voting and office holding are abolished. New restrictions are imposed on voting by African Americans and every new state entering the Union after 1819 denies blacks the right to vote.

 

1848: The first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York adopts a resolution calling for women's suffrage – but it will take 72 more years before most women can vote!

 

1850’s: Literacy tests and prolonged residence requirements (up to 21 years in some places!) once again restrict the right for many.

 

1855: Only 5 states allow African Americans to vote; NC is not among them.

 

1863 to 1870: 15 Northern states and territories reject proposals to let African Americans vote even though, in 1868, a Fifteenth Amendment is proposed to prohibit states from denying the right to vote based on race or previous servitude.

 

1869: Wyoming Territory allows women to vote, followed by Utah. Idaho and Colorado within two decades. Meanwhile, many states, counties, and cities let women vote in local elections and on local issues. 

 

1891: A Federal Elections Bill to strengthen the federal government's power to supervise elections and prevent suppression and fraud is defeated, ending federal efforts to enforce black voting rights in the South during the 19th Century.

1890 – 1920: Violence, gerrymandering, lengthy residence requirements, poll taxes, literacy tests, property requirements, laws disenfranchising voters for minor criminal offenses and other methods are all used to reduce the level of black voting in Southern and some Western states. African-American voting plummets, but grandfather clauses exempt most whites from these same provisions. 

 

1920: American women finally win the constitutional right to vote after Tennessee ratifies the Nineteenth Amendment by a single vote in its state house when 24-year old representative Harry Burns surprises his peers by voting for the amendment at the behest of his mother.

 

Mid-1920’s: Years of corruption and fraud lead 13 Northern and Western states to bar illiterate adults from voting and many Western states prohibit Asians from voting. Participation in presidential elections falls from a high of 90% in the late 19th century to 60% in the North in the 1920s -- and only 20% in the South.

 

1944: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the Texas Democratic Party can not restrict membership to whites or bar blacks from voting in the primary. The proportion of Southern blacks registered to vote begins to rise.

 

1946: A National Committee on Civil Rights calls for the abolition of poll taxes and federal action to protect the voting rights of African Americans and Native Americans.

1950’s: Literacy tests keep blacks from voting in 7 states, including NC, while poll taxes and 20-page tests on the Constitution and other civic matters keep many more African Americans from voting in other states.  

 

1957: The Civil Rights Act of 1957 allows the Justice Department to seek injunctions and file suits in voting rights cases.

1965: Martin Luther King, Jr., launches a 7-week voter registration drive in Selma, Alabama and leads hundreds of citizens to the courthouse to register to vote each day. Despite federal court orders, on-going police harassment and last minute "literacy" tests result in zero black voters being added to the rolls.

 

1965: The Twenty-fourth Amendment bars a poll tax in federal elections (adopted January 1964) and President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the National Voting Rights Act of 1965, prohibiting literacy tests and sending federal examiners into Southern states to register black voters. 450,000 African Americans register to vote within a year. Other federal and state laws strike down various other exclusionary tactics as unconstitutional.  

 

1970: The Vietnam War strengthens the argument that citizens old enough to die for their country are old enough to vote. An extension to the 1965 Voting Rights Act lowers the voting age to 18 and, soon after, the Twenty-sixth Amendment is passed, barring states and the federal government from denying the vote to anyone 18 or older.

 

Today: The fight for voter rights continues. In many states, ex-felons are barred from regaining their right to vote, even after their sentences are complete; some activists are arguing that the right to vote should be lowered to age 16; and partisan groups continue to file lawsuits challenging voter rights and seeking to rollback previous protections.

 

 

 

The moral — history has shown us that voting rights can’t be taken for granted and require constant attention. There will always be a need for citizens and organizations like Democracy North Carolina to safeguard the right to vote.