Voting rights in America

Professor David Domke, whose two-part Zoom lecture series on the 2020 election I discussed earlier this month, last night gave the first Zoom lecture in a three-part series on voting rights in America, and attempts by Republicans and southerners to limit those rights.

Last night's lecture was primarily historical, describing the efforts since the Civil War to extend the franchise and prevent state efforts to limit that franchise.  Next week, he will discuss the technology of voter suppression.  The week after that he will describe the hurdles that are being used to limit voting in the 2020 election.

I found last night's historical discussion to be fairly basic, certainly for most lawyers or for anyone who is politically involved.  It was a good refresher course, however.  Very briefly, as Domke pointed out, the Constitution originally left election laws pretty much up to the states.  Since the Civil War, however, Congress has made seven major efforts to extend the franchise. 

I'll just summarize those seven efforts, and await what may be a more interesting lecture next week.

1870 -- Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, forbidding any federal or state law limiting the franchise on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.  The Southern states immediately found ways around this amendment -- for example imposing a poll tax on the right to vote.

1913 -- Seventeenth Amendment -- Senators must be elected by direct vote of the voters, not by the legislature or other state agency.

1920 -- Nineteenth Amendment -- Voting may not be limited on the basis of sex.

1964 -- Twenty-fourth Amendment -- Abolition of the poll tax and other taxes as a requirement to vote in federal (not state) elections.

1965 -- Voting Rights Act

1971 -- 26th Amendment -- Lowers age of voting to 18.

1993 -- National Voter Registration Act -- Requires states to allow citizens to register to vote when they apply for or renew their drivers license, and in certain other contacts with state agencies.

Domke pointed out that felony disenfranchisement acts in many states deny the vote for life or for extended periods of time to convicted felons.  These laws were adopted in many Southern states as another means of discriminating against blacks, who were also selectively prosecuted.  In 2018, Florida voters passed, by a 64 percent margin, a constitutional amendment restoring the vote to most felons after they completed their sentence, and any periods of probation or parole.

The Republican legislature, with approval by the Republican governor, passed an act requiring that the felon also pay all legal fees, fines, and restitution to victims before being allowed to vote.  The constitutionality of that act has been challenged, and a federal court has held that the act imposes a tax in violation of the 24th Amendment, but only as those felons who cannot pay the fees. The burden is on the would-be voter to prove he can't pay the fees, but apparently no one knows the amount of the fees owed. At present the state appears determined to enforce the act.  The dispute affects the voting rights of 1.4 million Florida felons.