The Importance Of Voting In The United States

The right to vote for our leaders is every citizen’s right. It is our civic right as citizens to be able to go to the polls on election day to cast that all important vote that may or may not elect our leaders, but this was not the case in our nation’s early years. The right to vote was limited to property owners, or taxpayers, as poor Americans were not allowed to vote. At the time, Voter eligible citizens was very minimal compared to the population of the United States. This changed during the Jackson administration, as virtually all white male adults could cast their vote. African American males, Chinese Americans, and women were not given the same privileges as white adult males. Initially the states had the power to decide what faction …show more content…
With the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, a minor change came about, as it clearly established “that the right of every citizen to vote shall not be denied because of race or color”. Many states argued the meaning of the amendment, and through a series of decisions, the Supreme Court of the1870s stated that the amendment only asserts that if someone’s right to vote is denied, that the denial could not be based on the grounds of race (Wilson, Dilulio, JR & Bose, 2014). This gave the states the power to impose certain legal rulings at the time to prevent African Americans from voting: a literacy test, payment of a poll tax, and the denial to vote in a primary election in Southern states. The latter was referred to as the White …show more content…
They were simply not allowed to vote due to the laws that existed at the time. However, the laws somewhat changed in 1915, and some women were permitted to vote, mostly in the western states (Wilson, Dilulio, JR & Bose, 2014). A victory to women’s rights came in 1920, with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which essentially gave them the right to vote in any election. The Voting Rights Act of 1970 established that all citizens 18 years of age or older are eligible to vote in federal elections and contained a provision to lower the age to 18 in state elections. The Supreme Court decided this was unconstitutional, and as a result the 26th Amendment was proposed by Congress and ratified by the states in 1971 that gave all citizens 18 or older the right to vote in any election (Wilson, Dilulio, JR & Bose,

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