Voting

Although the United States is a government of, for, and by the people, the number of people who vote in elections is low.

• Nonpresidential election = less than 40% turnout
• Local elections = 10% or less

2.) 15th Amendment: ratified in 1870, was intended to protect any citizen from being denied the right to vote based on race or color.

STILL African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans were prevented from Voting

Poll Tax

Paying property tax was a qualification to vote. Remember at the time only land owners could vote.

When more minorities began owning land, a poll tax was introduced in many States.

3.) 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, it ensured the right to vote for females. A State could not discriminate against a citizen's sex.

4.) Voting Rights Act of 1965: makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, religion, and gender in voting, public places, the workplace, and schools.

5.) 26th Amendment, in 1971

No State can set the minimum age for voting at more than 18 years old.

Voting Requirements

1.) Citizenship: must be a US citizen to vote.

2.) Residence:

• a.) done to keep a political machine from forming.
• b.) allows new voters some time to become familiar with the candidates and issues in an election (local, and State).

3.) Age: 18 years old (26th Amendment)

4.) Registration: done to identify voters to prevent fraudulent voting

Suffrage and Civil Rights

Ratified in 1870

"Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by an state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." (1)

White Supremacists Supress Minorities

• Violence
• Gerrymandering- practice of drawing electoral district lines in order to limit voting.
• Literacy Tests
• Social Pressures (getting fired for voting)
• Poll taxes
• "White Primaries"

Setting Things Right

(kind of)

Smith v. Allwright (1944)

• Over-rode Grovey v. Townsend (1935)
• S.S. Allwright, a county election official, denied Lonnie E. Smith, a black man, the right to vote in the 1940 Texas Democratic primary
• verdict: violation of 15th amendment and states cannot "permit a private organization to practice racial discrimination" in elections.

Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960)

• Alabama legislature redrew Tuskegee electoral boundaries, creating a 28 sided-county from its previous square shape under act 140 (gerrymandering).
• verdict: Alabama legistaure violated the 15th amendment with act 140

Civil Rights Legislation

Civil Rights Act of 1957

• set up the civil rights commission
• one of the major commission's purposes is to inquire into claims of voter discrimination.
• the commission reports to the congress, president, and through the media.
• this act also gave the attorney general the power to seek federal court orders to prevent interference with any person's right to vote in any federal election.

• this act appointed federal voting referees.
• these "referees" would be sent to wherever a federal court found voter discrimination.
• they had the power to help qualified people to register and vote in federal elections.

• prohibits discrimination of sex and race in hiring, promoting and firing in the work place.
• set a precedent for many other civil rights acts
• Created the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commision (enforcer).
• Today: "prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age in hiring, promoting, firing, setting wages, testing, training, apprenticeship, and all other terms and conditions of employment."

• In 1965 Martin Luther King Jr. lead a voter registration drive, hoping to grab America's attention.
• King and his followers were met with violence. Two civil rights workers were killed.
• This outraged the president, Lyndon Johnson, and he pressed Congress to pass new legislation to fix the crisis.

• strengthened the 15th amendment.
• applied to ALL elections in the country.
• prohibited all devices like literacy tests in states where less than half of the electorate had been registered to vote and voted.
• the attorney general can appoint voting examiners to serve in any of those states as well.
• federal officers have the power to register voters and over the conduct of elections in those specific areas.

approval from the Department of Justice to change or create election laws.

• many cases have come from this law, which usually challenge these changes:
• the location of polling places
• the boundaries of election districts
• deadlines in the election process
• from ward or district election to at-large elections
• the qualifications candidates must meet in order to run for office.

preclearance is a punishment for areas that have had a history of discrimination.

A state can be removed from this process if,

• the state can prove to the United States District Court that it has not applied any discriminatory voting procedures for 10 years.
• When preclearance was created, it was immediately applied to 6 entire states: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, and 40 North Carolina counties.

15th Amendment

Today's Objectives (Section 1)

Civil Rights Act of 1960

Students will be able to:

1.) Recognize the 5 stages of Extending Suffrage

2.) Examine the amendments that extended the voting rights.

• 15th,19th, and 26th
• Voting Rights Act of 1965

3.) Identify the efforts to yield or stop suffrage

• Literacy and Poll Tax

4.) Explain and Label the voting requirements

Injunction

" a court order that either compels (forces) or restrains (limits) the performance of some act by a private individual or by a public official. "

• if violated, it results in contempt of court which is a crime punishable by fine or imprisonment

Tom Pendergast

Transients: persons living in a State for a short time, do not get the right to vote in that State.

Examples: Business travelers, members of the military, and college students.

5 Stages

of

Extending

Suffrage

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

So why is it important to know about suffrage?

1.) Early 1800s Religious qualifications disappeared

History

To Combat the 15th Amendment, some states issued:

Preclearance

Jim Crow Laws

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi

Whites had to read short simple worded passages, while MINORITY Americans had to read extensively long and complex passages.

Literacy Test: discriminated against African Americans in the South, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans in the West from voting in elections.

Assessment 6.2

Assessment 6.1

Gender, Age

1. Complete all Vocabulary for section 1.

Voting behavior is the way people vote, why they vote as they do and how they arrive at the decisions they make. Voting behavior is heavily influenced by many sociological and psychological factors.

1. Complete all vocabulary for sections 3 and 4.

2. What rights do non-English speaking citizens have when voting?

3. How has the Voting Rights Act changed since with was approved in 1965?

4.What are all of the factors that affect voter turnout.

5. In some contries voting is required of all eligible citizens. Do you think mandatory voting would work in the United States? Why or why not?

6. Why do you think factors like income level and level of education affect voter participation?

Religious, Ethnic Background

Sociological Factors

Candidates and Issues

2. Why do you think only white male landowners were allowed to vote in 1789?

Voter Behavior

Family and Other Groups

Psychological Factors

Geography

Psychological factors that influence voter behavior are a voter's perceptions of politics, that is, how the voter sees the parties, the candidates, and the issues in an election.

Sociological factors affecting voter behavior are really the many pieces of a voter's social and economic life.

Income, Occupation

How will you vote?

Party Identification

Education

3. What five restrictions does the Constitution put on the states for voter qualifications?

4. What are the requirements to vote?

5. Do you think there should be other requirements to vote? What should they be?