America is turning against democracy

Last week, some of America observed the heroism of one Martin Luther King who was murdered because he thought that “We, the people” should include more than white European immigrants. While some celebrated, others did not, doing their best to see that black lives did not matter.

In 2021, 19 states passed 34 laws aimed at excluding minorities from participating in elections. This is not about election fraud. It is about denying citizens of the United States their right to vote.

Election Fraud a Disguise

Election fraud is a disguise for our bigotry but every legislator knows what the goal of restrictive legislation is all about so let’s quit lying to ourselves about the legitimacy of laws intentionally limiting the vote.

In 1776, the Declaration of Independence declared that “all men are created equal” without specifying who was included among the “equal” men. At that time, only 5-10% of the men were permitted to vote and only then when they had a property stake in society.

Eleven years later, the Founding Fathers proclaimed in the U. S. Constitution that “we, the people” were establishing this new republic. To be transparent, they should have said “we 5-10% of the people create this government.”

Voting for Electors

But the democratic impulse blossomed early in our history, first with the states giving citizens the power to choose the electors for the Electoral College by popular vote rather than a select group of leaders.

Next, the property requirements for voting became obsolete with the radically changing society. So the right to vote was unfettered and millions of additional men were added to the rolls around the President Jackson era.

When the Civil War ended, northerners saw political advantage to extending the right to vote to former slaves in the Fifteenth Amendment. Congress required that the states of the rebellion ratify the amendment as a price for readmission back into the Union.

Death in the Details

When President Hayes made a deal to withdraw the U.S. Army from the South, the slaveholding society regained control of elections in the South and administered the Fifteenth Amendment to death with literacy tests, intimidation (KKK) and a slew of oppressive measures.

To this very day, the fight over black voting is high on the legislative agenda in every state. While they couch bigotry with other arguments, there is little doubt that the goal is to keep black people from voting. If it is possible to justify slavery, it is possible to justify depriving citizens of their vote.

Women’s Vote

In 1848, Elizabeth Stanton called a women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York to demand the right to vote for women. When the Fifteenth Amendment passed, white women couldn’t understand why they weren’t as entitled to vote as black men. They got no answer.

It took 80 years before the democratic dream of equality at the polls for women became reality with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

In 1924, Congress passed the Snyder Act that expanded the vote to Native Americans. At last, they had the right to vote in their own country.

18-Year-Old-Vote

Finally, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment was ratified in 1971, lowering the voting age to 18.

Democracy in America has marched through the decades. Over the last two centuries, we have recognized the equality of men and women of all origins and colors, transforming the original aristocracy into a true democracy.

But all is not well. The right to vote has fallen into the crosshairs of the most vicious political polarization since the Civil War. Our values have changed. Politics has become more important than democratic values and the future does not look very promising, especially if we subscribe to the equality of all people.

Democracy is in serious trouble.