Adam Cohen: American Elections and the Grand Old Tradition of Disenfranchisement
The House of Representatives struck a major blow against democracy last month. It passed a bill that would deny the vote to anyone who shows up at the polls without a government-issued photo ID. The bill’s requirements are so onerous and inflexible that they could prevent millions of eligible voters without driver’s licenses — who are disproportionately poor, minority or elderly — from casting a ballot.
With that vote Congress joined a growing number of states that are erecting new barriers to voting. Republican-dominated legislatures and election officials have adopted absurdly difficult registration rules. They have removed eligible voters from the rolls with Katherine Harris-style purges, and required voters to buy ID cards to vote, a modern form of poll tax.
These new voting laws are disturbing, but they should not be surprising. The story of American voting is usually told as one of steady expansion: constitutional amendments extending the franchise to freed slaves, women and 18-year-olds, and Supreme Court rulings and federal laws eliminating voting obstacles for Southern blacks. But racial and religious minorities, women and the poor have historically had to fight not just to get the right to vote, but to stop it from being taken away.
America has a hidden history of disenfranchisement. It has operated, as a Harvard professor, Alexander Keyssar, recounts in his valuable history, “The Right to Vote,” on the expected lines of class, race, ethnicity and religion, and often for partisan gain. Right now, we are in another period of what Professor Keyssar calls “backsliding.” Minorities and the poor — and everyone who cares about American democracy — have to stand up for a principle that should by now be beyond debate: universal suffrage.
Long before the Constitution guaranteed women the right to vote in 1920, some women had already had the franchise and had it taken away. New Jersey, which gave women the vote in its state Constitution in 1776, disenfranchised them in 1807. Pennsylvania, which let blacks vote after the Revolution, took away their right to vote in the 1830’s.
Immigrants were another common target of disenfranchisement laws. In 1840, New York — which, like most states, did not require pre-Election Day registration — adopted a registration law that applied only to New York City, aimed at the growing Irish Catholic population. The lower classes were another target. In the 1800’s, New Jersey adopted “sunset laws” that required the polls to close before factories let out for the day. In the 1800’s and early 1900’s, many states took the vote away from “paupers.”
Disenfranchisement was often motivated by partisan politics. In the South, at the end of Reconstruction, white Democrats pushed through poll taxes and literacy tests to reduce the black Republican vote. In the North, it was Republicans putting up the barriers, like New York’s 1921 constitutional amendment imposing a rigorous literacy test, aimed at keeping hundreds of thousands of Yiddish speakers from voting....
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With that vote Congress joined a growing number of states that are erecting new barriers to voting. Republican-dominated legislatures and election officials have adopted absurdly difficult registration rules. They have removed eligible voters from the rolls with Katherine Harris-style purges, and required voters to buy ID cards to vote, a modern form of poll tax.
These new voting laws are disturbing, but they should not be surprising. The story of American voting is usually told as one of steady expansion: constitutional amendments extending the franchise to freed slaves, women and 18-year-olds, and Supreme Court rulings and federal laws eliminating voting obstacles for Southern blacks. But racial and religious minorities, women and the poor have historically had to fight not just to get the right to vote, but to stop it from being taken away.
America has a hidden history of disenfranchisement. It has operated, as a Harvard professor, Alexander Keyssar, recounts in his valuable history, “The Right to Vote,” on the expected lines of class, race, ethnicity and religion, and often for partisan gain. Right now, we are in another period of what Professor Keyssar calls “backsliding.” Minorities and the poor — and everyone who cares about American democracy — have to stand up for a principle that should by now be beyond debate: universal suffrage.
Long before the Constitution guaranteed women the right to vote in 1920, some women had already had the franchise and had it taken away. New Jersey, which gave women the vote in its state Constitution in 1776, disenfranchised them in 1807. Pennsylvania, which let blacks vote after the Revolution, took away their right to vote in the 1830’s.
Immigrants were another common target of disenfranchisement laws. In 1840, New York — which, like most states, did not require pre-Election Day registration — adopted a registration law that applied only to New York City, aimed at the growing Irish Catholic population. The lower classes were another target. In the 1800’s, New Jersey adopted “sunset laws” that required the polls to close before factories let out for the day. In the 1800’s and early 1900’s, many states took the vote away from “paupers.”
Disenfranchisement was often motivated by partisan politics. In the South, at the end of Reconstruction, white Democrats pushed through poll taxes and literacy tests to reduce the black Republican vote. In the North, it was Republicans putting up the barriers, like New York’s 1921 constitutional amendment imposing a rigorous literacy test, aimed at keeping hundreds of thousands of Yiddish speakers from voting....