Issues #2: The Right to Vote.

This may come as a surprise to many Americans, but we don't as Americans, have a right to vote. The Constitution of the United States has several Amendments that restricted how states can restrict the right to vote, but there is no explicit right that is stated anywhere in the Constitution. You can read the Constitution right here.

Voting is a right that the States give to their own citizens, rather than a federal right. To give a comparison, all American citizens have the right to free speech because of a combination of the First Amendment and because of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. In this case, the 14th Amendment restricted the power of states to limit free speech, the First Amendment, originally, only applied to the Federal Government, hence why Congress is mentioned by name.

Next let's look at the 15th Amendment, which says this:

Amendment XV

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Notice the wording of the first section, it doesn't give an explicit right to vote to citizens of the United States, rather it restricts the power of states from denying that right on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Now, there are two other Amendments we are going to look at, the 19th Amendment, and the 26th Amendment. Both of which share the same wording as the 15th Amendment, and therefore neither one guarantees a federal right to vote to anyone, but restricts states from denying the vote to women or those that are 18 years old or older.

So what does this mean? The question can be complicated, first we have to examine Citizenship within the United States, first, there are two basic levels of citizenship, Federal and State, all citizens of the States are citizens of the Federal government, but not all State Citizens are Citizens of all States, does that make sense? Let's put it this way, I'm a Citizens of Missouri and a Citizen of the United States, however, I am NOT a citizen of let's say Illinois, I don't live there, and therefore the rights that may be extended to citizens of Illinois do not extend to me.

The Federal Constitution is not a restrictive document, the 10th amendment states that any power NOT mentioned in the Constitution or its Amendments are instead enumerated in the states. When the country was founded, after the Articles of Confederation were replaced by the Constitution, less than half of white males could vote, the reason was that most did not own property, and hence didn't qualify. This was, and still is, Constitutional, however, over time, the states themselves extended the franchise to include, at least, all white males over 21 years old.

Over the years, as the country expanded, laws in various states have expanded the franchise to other people, for example, before the 19th Amendment was passed, many western states extended the franchise to women, and many other states lowered the voting age before the passage of the 26th Amendment.

States have this power, but, at the same time, just because one state gave its citizens these types of rights, before the passage of these Amendments, doesn't mean that when a citizens moves away from that state, they retain that right. A modern day example would be with convicted felons, many states take away the right to vote, permanently, from convicted felons, while others do not. A felon in states that don't restrict the right to vote in this way may lose that right if they move to a state with these laws.

Now here is something that's somewhat of a gray area, Federal law. There are many Federal laws that further restrict how the states can restrict the right to vote, mostly as a response to the Civil Rights Movement. They include not having unreasonable tests to restrict the right to vote, like literacy tests, counting beans in a jar, and other Jim Crow type of laws. They also extend the non-discrimination started by the 15th Amendment by including National Origin in as a protected class of citizens.

These laws are enforced onto the states basically by saying the Federal Government will restrict funding for certain projects, like Highways, if the laws aren't enforced by the states. The states themselves will then enact the laws as state laws, to keep the funding. This isn't Unconstitutional because the States aren't guaranteed help by the Federal Government in the Constitution except for defense.

So what does this mean for the average citizen? Well, its perfectly Constitutional for states to restrict voting rights to only landowners, like many used to do in the past, or they could restrict it based on annual income, height, weight, criminal record, and pretty much any other reason OTHER than Race, Color, National Origin, Sex, or Age. Will any state actually do this? I doubt it, but that isn't the point, the point is that they could do this, not that they actually will.

In any case, this is a problem that should be resolved because of the potential for future abuse, and to alleviate concerns of botched elections. A simple solution was proposed by the Honorable Congressman from Illinois' Second District, Jesse L. Jackson Jr. A Constitutional Amendment giving an explicit right to vote for all citizens of the United States. He has a website up that illustrates this further, you can find it here. He also illustrates many of the problems of NOT having the right to vote in the United States, much better than I.