The Long Struggle for Universal Suffrage

by Tyler Reny

In the United States, a country that takes great pride in its democratic institutions, voting is widely referred to as a fundamental, universal, even natural right for U.S. citizens--only superseded by the “unalienable” right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Yet the bevy of demobilizing and disenfranchising voter-identification laws passed by state legislatures in the last two years serve as an important reminder that the franchise isn’t listed as a right in any of our founding documents and, as history shows, was never considered one. It is only through broad political movements and bloody struggles that the franchise has been expanded to underrepresented citizens.

For most of U.S. history, the government was not a government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” but a government of, by, and for the wealthy white male landowning elite.

Even before the American Revolution, each colonial government adopted its own requirements to vote. While these varied in specifics, most were based on well-established British precedents that extended democratic rights to white elites with land. Voting was not a right but a privilege conferred upon a chosen few. If it were a right, some feared, it would open up a Pandora’s box of voting rights for all individuals, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender--a nightmare some thought best avoided.

During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a committee of state delegates spent a hot summer week debating a uniform rule for suffrage. In the end, the Founders tied the right to vote for U.S. representatives to voting requirements in each state, a decision born both from ideology and out of political expediency--as uniform requirements for voting might sour the chances that the individual states would adopt the new Constitution.

Despite the slow expansion of voter rolls through the 18th and 19th centuries, it wasn’t until 1919 that universal women’s suffrage would be guaranteed and protected by a constitutional amendment. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s, after years of peaceful marches and brutal violence, that the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act would truly extend the franchise to all African-Americans. It wasn’t until 1971 that the 26th Amendment would allow 18-year-olds to vote.

Despite the hard-earned wins, state legislatures across the country have been cracking down on the fallacious specter of voter fraud with a volley of voter-identification laws that are expected to disproportionately suppress turnout of minority voters. One study finds that upwards of 10 million Latinos could be deterred from voting this year. Another illustrates the bills’ effects on young minority voters, driving down turnout in key swing states such as Pennsylvania and Florida, where even small numbers of voters can determine who sits in the Oval Office.

Given the nation’s history with voting requirements, these draconian laws aren’t surprising. They exist because the U.S. Constitution devolves voting and registration requirements to the states, allowing a patchwork of expansive and restrictive laws to determine who can easily vote and who will face various hurdles on Election Day. As precedent has shown, however, these barriers can be overcome.

Today, on National Voter Registration Day, as nonprofits, civic-minded volunteers, and political campaigns around the country work tirelessly to navigate state laws, register voters, and ensure that turnout is high on Election Day, let’s call on Congress to finally live up to the ideal and rhetoric of universal voting rights.

Let’s call on Congress to draft and pass a national voting rights constitutional amendment that renders moot onerous voter ID laws. Let’s make sure that the diverse voices of immigrant and minority communities that bring so much vitality to our democracy are strengthened not silenced. Let’s make sure that all Americans have the right to vote.

Cross posted from The National Journal Next America: http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/politics/opinion-how-the-u-s-is-still-struggling-with-universal-suffrage-20120925

Let’s Prove Them Wrong: Intolerance in Post-9/11 America

The anniversary of the horrific September 11^th terrorist attacks will arrive and pass with waning fanfare each year.  The major network news channels will still broadcast their tributes with morose clips of dust, smoke, twisted steel, and brave heroes.  Suited politicians will pay their respects.  The names of the innocent victims of the truly barbaric act will be read aloud at the memorial erected in lower Manhattan, the nearly finished façade of the beautiful new mammoth tower glittering in the background.

But though lower Manhattan has sprung back to life -- a testament to the resilience of the American people – the attacks of September 11^th have nudged the US down a painful path of war and death, xenophobia, racial profiling, and violence.  While national security should be a priority of the federal government. So too should ensuring that any dark-skinned male with a beard, regardless of his religion, accent, or country of origin, doesn’t feel like a target of gun-toting psychopaths or law enforcement agencies entrusted to protect them.  In a country dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, tolerance is an oft-mentioned though too rarely practiced ideal.  We can and should do better. 

Once the dust settled on ground zero, the fire was lit under the Islamaphobic fringe, a slow simmer that occasionally boiled into public view.Remember Florida Pastor Terry Jones’s disgraceful publicity stunt – the “execution” burning of the Quran that incited riots in Afghanistan that killed 12 innocent U.N. workers?  Remember the protests over the planned Mosque in Manhattan?

Several of our elected officials have turned the heat up. Since 2011, two dozen states have proposed or passed laws banning Sharia law in the US court system, despite the fact that the “extent of its applicability is always dictated by American law.”  New York Representative Peter King has fueled Islamaphobia with Congressional hearings on the extent of radicalization in the American Muslim community.  The Tea-Party hero Michele Bachmann and her fear-mongering paranoid colleagues harked back to the golden days of McCarthy-style witchhunts with their baseless accusations earlier this year that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated top levels of the US government. 

Rhetoric and political theatrics is never without consequence.  Thirty percent of the public now believes that Muslims want to establish Sharia Law in the US.  This Anti-Islamic fervor, fueled and legitimized by the very people enlisted with upholding our civil liberties, has led to vicious acts of violence on Muslims and non-Muslims alike.  Last year a New York City cab driver was repeatedly stabbed after disclosing his religion to his passenger.  Two elderly Sikh men were shot to death in California and six slain in Wisconsin after shooters perceived the victims in both cases to be Muslims.

As the Southern Poverty Law Center has so eloquently stated, “rarely has the United States seen a more reckless and bare-knuckled campaign to vilify a distinct class of people and compromise their fundamental civil and human rights than the recent rhetoric against Muslims.”  On this 11^th anniversary of September 11^th, let’s remember that there is no justification for the wholesale demonization of anyone  perceived to be Muslim.  Let’s remember that rhetoric has power that can lead to tragic action.  Let’s remember that we should strive towards respect and tolerance.  Hate and intolerance is what the 9/11 hijackers lived.  It’s what they wanted from us.  Let’s prove them wrong.

Invisible Obama update....

This post from a few weeks ago from George Washington University's David Karpf:

Most reporters will be tasked with focusing on the drama, the soundbites. More of the public will see/hear the headlines then will pay attention to the speeches themselves. And the headlines and soundbites will all be geared towards advancing a predetermined narrative. Fox News will call Romney's speech a landmark event that reignites his campaign. They'll call Ryan's speech Reaganesque. CNN and the major news networks will talk about how the speeches couldn't have gone much better. They'll ask a panel of commentators to rate the speech. A token Democrat will give it a 1, a token Republican will give it a 10, and the other analysts will all give it an 8 or a 9. They'll focus on how close the polls already are and speculate on how big of a convention bump we'll see. MSNBC will stand alone, with Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes talking about the lack of policy details, the errors, oversights, and outright lies, and the threat to popular government programs. Politifact will issue "mostly false" statements. No one will pay any attention to Politifact. Each of these networks is playing to a niche audience that tunes in for their brand of commentary.

Karpf's comments help clarify why lies in a convention speech aren't likely going to have much impact on polling numbers and lays out, very clearly, why Nate Silver's Fivethirtyeight election forecasts don't factor in much of a bounce for either candidate after the convention... stay tuned for polling updates after today's job numbers report.  Dems are spinning the lousy 96,000 jobs as a positive because unemployment dropped to 8.1%, GOP, understandably, is hammering Obama for the truly lousy numbers.

Invisible Obama

If you care about facts and are foolish enough to follow politics, you may be flabbergasted at the slew of lies about President Obama coming from the right over the last few weeks.  From false accusations that Obama has removed the work-requirements from welfare to talk about Obama letting a GM plant close before he was even President, to turning an out-of-context quote into an entire convention theme – lies and misinformation about President Obama have abound.  Yet it only took 90 seconds of an octogenarian’s primetime speech before all the disparate pieces fell into place – Mitt Romney isn’t running against President Obama.  He is running against the President that only Republicans can see, “Invisible Obama.”

As Obama revealed in an interview with Vanity Fair, “there is a character people see you there called Barack Obama.”  It is the Obama Administration’s goal to shape who Barack Obama is, whether it is true or not, and it is the opposition party’s goal to distort it to their advantage.  These GOP distortions are well known, persuasive, and likely to continue – Mitt Romney’s pollster Neil Newhouse said, after all, that fact-checkers wouldn’t “dictate” the Romney campaign. Touché.

So who is Invisible Obama?  In 2008 he was a radical Marxist-Kenyan with a deep hatred of white people and secret ties to terrorist Islamic groups.  Invisible Obama is now a job killing, entitlement flaunting, big government liberal intent on punishing job creators, intentionally destroying the economy, and ruining Medicare.  

Where is the evidence for most of these claims?  The proof that Republicans provide is often misleading, taken out of context, or outright lies.  But it doesn’t matter.  National elections are not decided by competing detailed policy proposals (as they are in the Netherlands), but on a complex combination of personality, morals, basic policy differences, economic performance, looks, oratory, and competing narratives and characterizations that emerge during the campaign.

Lies aren’t effective for vast majority of the voting population.  Most voters, including a significant portion of independent, are decided partisans.  The true swing voters that can actually impact the election, those in battleground states, compose only about between 3-5% of the registered voter population.

How do these swing voters ultimately make up their minds?  Swing voters often form their opinions about candidates based on “emotional intangibles,” many are low-information voters who may not watch the Republican National Convention but you will hear through sound bites that Romney and Ryan blasted Obama for shutting down a GM plant (he has no soul!), and removing work requirements from welfare (how dare he!).  Is it true?  No.  But these voters aren’t going to run to their computers to fact check the claim. That is exactly what the Romney campaign is banking on. 

As an aspiring political scientist, I would like to think that a greater emphasis on policy could elevate the debate above the misleading and false characters that both campaigns develop of their opponent.  But the narratives developed are powerful and facts are stubborn things.  As long as 17% of voters think Obama is Muslim and 25% of adult Americans think he was born outside of the United States, focusing on policy proposals will be difficult.  Former President Clinton did so beautifully last night.  But did swing voters listen?  Tough to say.  Instead, I’m afraid, many voters will vote against Obama because he is the President of entitlements and dependency, despite the incontrovertible fact that he is not.