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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIs it time to add a right to vote to the Constitution?
Posted with permission.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/it-time-add-right-vote-the-constitution?cid=sm_fb_maddow
Is it time to add a right to vote to the Constitution?
02/24/15 10:50 AM
By Steve Benen
For the fifth consecutive year, proponents of voting rights find themselves on the defensive. New restrictions are under consideration in Nevada, Missouri, and Georgia. Voting restrictions were recently considered in Nebraska and Colorado, and while they were defeated, it stands to reason voting-rights opponents will be back.
Its against this backdrop that the Democratic officials are increasingly invested in a new idea: changing the U.S. Constitution to explicitly guarantee the right to vote. My colleague Zack Roth reported the other day on developments at the DNCs winter meeting.
The resolution was submitted by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the DNC, as well as Donna Brazile, a vice chair and prominent figure in the party.
To be sure, voting-rights advocates shouldnt get their hopes up, at least not anytime soon. Amending the Constitution is extremely difficult, and in a Republican-led Congress, it stands no chance whatsoever of advancing.
But steps like these are about starting a lengthy process and changing the nature of the public conversation which by some measures, is long overdue.
As we discussed several months ago, many Americans may not realize that the Constitution extends a wide variety of rights to the populace, but the right to vote is largely absent from the document.
In fact, though the Constitution offers some relatively detailed instructions on voting for president through the Electoral College, the document has far less to say about the right of Americans to cast a ballot in their own democracy. There are amendments extending voting rights to freed slaves, women, and 18-year-olds, and poll taxes are prohibited, but theres no additional clarity in the text about Americans franchise.
In recent years, this wasnt considered much of a problem at least since the Jim Crow era, there was no systemic national campaign underway to undermine voting rights. But in the Obama era, the Republican campaign to suppress the vote has included restrictions without modern precedent, which in turn has started a new conversation about changing the Constitution to guarantee what is arguably the most fundamental of all democratic rights.
Matt Yglesias had a good piece on this a while back.
But this norm is just a norm. There is no actual constitutional provision stating that all citizens have the right to vote, only that voting rights cannot be dispensed on the basis of race or gender discrimination. A law requiring you to cut your hair short before voting, or dye it blue, or say pretty please let me vote, all might pass muster. And so might a voter ID requirement.
The legality of these kinds of laws hinge on whether they violate the Constitutions protections against race and gender discrimination, not on whether they prevent citizens from voting. As Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier has written, this leaves one of the fundamental elements of democratic citizenship tethered to the whims of local officials.
All of which leads to the question about a constitutional amendment, making the affirmative right of an adult American citizen to cast a ballot explicit within our constitutional system. Norm Ornstein, one of the Beltways most respected political scientists, has made the case for precisely this kind of constitutional amendment.
An explicit constitutional right to vote would give traction to individual Americans who are facing these tactics, and to legal cases challenging restrictive laws. The courts have up to now said that the concern about voter fraud largely manufactured and exaggerated provides an opening for severe restrictions on voting by many groups of Americans. That balance would have to shift in the face of an explicit right to vote. Finally, a major national debate on this issue would alert and educate voters to the twin realities: There is no right to vote in the Constitution, and many political actors are trying to take away what should be that right from many millions of Americans.
The fact that the Democratic National Committee is now on board with the idea raises the visibility of the issue and lends the endeavor the kind of establishment support its lacked.
Im generally skeptical of proposed changes to the Constitution, but that skepticism wanes in the face of a sweeping voter-suppression campaign, unlike anything in my lifetime, that shows no signs of abating.
Dont be surprised if, in next years elections, candidates for Congress and the White House are confronted with a simple question: is it time to add the right to vote to the Constitution?
WillyT
(72,631 posts)guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)Sorry. I thought I was on the Tea Party Patriot site.
world wide wally
(21,754 posts)babylonsister
(171,079 posts)actually be detrimental to their thinning ranks and conniving ways. So what? and what's new?
99Forever
(14,524 posts)If we don't start pushing HARD about this now, we may never get the chance to again.
Hell yes.
lastlib
(23,271 posts)Something that would eliminate the most egregious forms of gerrymandering that we are currently seeing. (Not sure exactly how to do it, but there are better legal minds out there who could figure out something.)
meow2u3
(24,768 posts)Partisan gerrymandering to the extreme that the party that gets the most votes is underrepresented in Congress and/or state legislatures, ought to be abolished via constitutional amendment. That way, rethugs won't be allowed to get away with having 3 times more reps than they should.
For instance, Pennsylvania has 18 Congressional reps, 13 of them rethugs, despite the Democrats winning the popular vote by 50%-49%. Under my proposed section of a universal voting rights amendment, Democratic seats should outnumber that of Republicans 10-8, or 9-9 at worst.
Initech
(100,099 posts)And that's regardless of race, gender, creed, religion, or sexual identity. To do anything else would be, I dunno, unconstitutional?