The Constitution Today: Voting
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-11-01/constitution-today-voting
The history of voting in the United States is ever-evolving. As we have changed as a society, so have our ideas about who is a citizen and who has a right to vote. The Founding Fathers said little in the Constitution about voting. It was left up to each state to decide on eligibility. For nearly a century after the Constitution was written, voters were almost entirely white men who owned land. After the Civil War, men of all races were given the right to vote. Fifty years later, women finally won that right, too. The third segment in our series on "The Constitution Today" examines how voting rights have evolved over time.
Guests
Michael Quinn
president and executive director of James Madison's Montpelier.
Marcia Greenberger
founder and co-president of the National Women's Law Center.
Henry Chambers Jr.
professor of law, University of Richmond.
Comments
Please familiarize yourself with our Code of Conduct and Terms of Use before posting your comments.
If non citizens are permitted to vote, what if any distinction remains between citizens and non citizens? Why not then do away with the whole concept.
Norman
Rochester, NY
An interesting point that I think may add to the discussion. The extreme delay Women experienced in obtaining the right to vote has been touched on several times in this broadcast, with perhaps a bit of confusion as to why it took so long (even until the 1920s) for that right to be recognized nationally, when some frontier territories and new states were recognizinge that right of their own volition.
The reading I have done makes it fairly explicit that there were entrenched political interests mobilized in opposition to women's sufferage, particularly in the Textile and Alcohol industries, as women were the largest employee base of the former and the single biggest organizers of the Prohibition movement opposing the latter. We tend to think that "big business" twisting arms in government to secure their preemininence in their markets is a new thing, but there is nothing new under the sun.
How closely related were the Sufferage movement and the temperance/prohibition movements prior to 1920, and if there was a connection did the Sufferage movement suffer any backlash due to the failed great experiment of prohibition?
Michael
Concord, NH
As a felon I am not sure if my vote will count. From what I understand it varies from state to state. First of all I would like that information to more readily available. I am not motivated to stand in line and vote if it most likely will not count. I also have done an exorbitant amount of research to find out if my vote even counts, and I don't believe it does here in Michigan but I am not entirely sure.
Also will I not be allowed to have a vote count for the rest of my life?
The media exercises so much virtual power over our minds in theis country. If you do not vote you give them actual power. VOTE!
I think it virtually impossible to find someone who does not pay tax. There are few states without sales tax.
If you work, you pay Social Security tax and city or county taxes even if you pay no federal income tax
If you buy tires or gas for your car, or many, many other items, there is excise tax included or added to the price you pay.
The final struggle for woman suffrage was especially dramatic. Suffragists picketed the White House--the first protestors ever to do so--and were jailed. They went on hunger strikes and were force fed. For the full story read A WOMAN'S CRUSADE: ALICE PAUL AND THE BATTLE FOR THE BALLOT by Mary Walton.
The Women's Christian Temperance Union supported suffrage, because women were considered likely to use their votes in favor of Prohibition. By the same token, the alcohol industry mobilized against suffrage whenever and wherever it came up for a vote and was hugely instrumental in many states in defeating measures that would have allowed women to cast votes.
Excuse me but George Bush ran up the national Dept 3 times over.
The Hertitage Corp is not a group tp Listen to they are supporting the REPUBLICAN PARTY. I objected every thing they said on the air.
WE,the people, have failed our President and our country
by standing on the sidelines and allowing the GOP to vote
along party lines and blocking every legislature.
May God help us because we did not help ourselves.
Silence in the presence of wrongdoing is the death of
democracy.