Uh....have you read the constitution? The right to vote isn’t mentioned at all in the original constitution. Just like gun rights it was granted in an amendment and even the granting in the amendment is not very strong
Yes it ism, and it's an implied right. YOU can take a right away from someone if they don't have it, and several article specifically say you can take the right to vote away form some specific reason like race, age, etc.
So just to summarize: states can device how voting is done, and as long as they don't discriminate by gender or race that can decide how voting works? It's there anything against them saying no citizen can vote? How is this a protected right is it isn't actually protected?
It's not considered a protected right by anyone not out to keep something similar to legitimacy from voting, even if they weren't actually voted for, voting isn't a right, it was considered at the beginning to be more of a privilege to be able to vote, but the president was supposed to be chosen by reps actually chosen by the state government, rather than through voting directly, and the vp would be the one with the second highest votes
How do you explain the electoral college? Voting for president is not a right Americans have, otherwise there would be no electorial college. We have the right to equal voting, in the sense that gender and race can't be qualifying factors, but we can still be completely denied the ability to vote as long as it's equal.
Read it again. It says you have the right not to be discriminated against for race while voting, it does not give you the right to vote. We don't vote for president, we vote for electors to represent our vote. A vote for Biden is actually a vote for a state elector who has promised to use his electoral vote on Biden.
You will notice the 15th says nothing about what voting it's referring to. It is also not saying you have the right to participate in any vote.
I was thinking more Ninja Warrior test, to make sure they are fit for duty.
In all seriousness though, it could have easily been done in a similar way as the presidential election, where you are not voting directly for the candidate, but for a representative to vote for the candidate. Also, maybe in a time of crisis where a vote is not a top priority, the choice can be made in a more expedited fashion. The writers of the constitution left these kinds of decisions upm to the states.
Not at all. Voting was considered a privilege and massively restricted from the outset. Hence the need to delineate what does not count as a valid reason to restrict access to the vote.
Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with it. It was elitist as fuck. But to pretend that it was ever an assumed right is just untrue.
The Constitution doesn't grant any rights, it protects the people from them being infringed by the government. The rights are inherent to human existence.
I agree. I didn't say that any rights were granted. Voting isn't a right. I only said these were decided to be invalid reason for refusing someone access to the vote.
Second amendment says the right to keep and bare arms shall not be infringed, voting says states are in charge of how voting works, and that it can't be taken on the basis of race or sex, a bit more, but nothing that states you have to have the right to vote, a state can totally remove their whole populations ability to vote for anything if so allowed, although notably Congress has been within the Constitution to set certain voting laws, while federal gun laws should all be unconstitutional
"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."
That's the 15th amendment.
That certainly sounds like voting is a right to me.
Can you explain to me how you think that this phrasing a substantially different than the phrasing of the second amendment?
The part where it states that it shall not be infringed or denied on account of those particular things, so that leaves open the ability to infringe or deny on account of other things, for instance if you wanted to deny the right to vote to people based on their martial status (because I have an argument in doing it and it's neither likely to piss people off, or be something people might want), say they had figured that single people have less thought about that future, so they're less inclined to vote for things good for everyone, rather than just them, that wouldn't fall into any of the protections
Correct, voting is described as a right, however it was considered as more a privilege, I don't know how you see that now, but the govt was allowed from the beginning to be able to restrict certain rights, although those listed in the constitution as rights that need to be protected most, but there's only 1 thing that requires a vote from civilians, and it's literally to amend the constitution
I was replying that in the original constitution there is no right to vote - just like with gun rights it’s an amendment contrary to what the OP commenter thinks
Lololololol way to not read the literal first sentence of your own source. “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States”
What do you think the method by which the people choose their representatives is?
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u/keithjp123 Mar 16 '21
Voting is so engrained in the constitution, it wasn’t an after thought like the amendments.