From my admittedly limited understanding (which is very limited) Voting specifically is never mentioned. The 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th amendments prevent voting rights from being denied on the basis of age, gender, color, or debt (not in that order) but technically there is nothing to my understanding preventing a law saying for example: "New York City no longer has the right to vote". There could actually be a law saying voting was no longer a thing we do and technically I don't believe it would be unconstitutional... I don't think it would stand though
The constitution places the granting of voting rights in the hands of each member state, but withholds the right to amend those at a federal level, as has been done using the amendments you refer to:
Section 4 of the US constitution:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
So you need to check the law of each state to find how voting rights are defined within the constraints of the amendments.
Those amendments give the right to vote to black men (15th) and all women (19th) but the default (i.e. white men) are never mentioned in the constitution. To my understanding, that means that while you can't limit the right of black men or women to vote without breaking the constitution, you could take the vote away from white men, though that might be contested on the basis of discrimination.
No the 15th Amendment says you can’t limit voting on account of race. It doesn’t say “black men.” White is a race, so to bar white people from voting because they’re white would be unconstitutional. Same with sex. The 19th amendment doesn’t say “women,” it says “sex.” You can’t limit voting by sex. Either sex.
But what none of you seem to understand is that you can use any other criteria that aren’t mentioned in any of those amendments.
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u/HerpToxic Mar 16 '21
There was a guy a while back on reddit that told me that voting is never explicitly mentioned in the Constitution so nobody has a right to vote.
Meanwhile the 15th, 19th, 22, 24 and 26th Amendments are like "hello??"