RIGHT TO VOTE
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Mentioned in the Fourteenth,
Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-fourth and Twenty-sixth Amendments, the
right to vote (suffrage) is freedom of an individual to actively participate in
the political decision-making process by choosing between competing people or
ideas without fear or reprisal. The right to vote can only be restricted if the
government shows a compelling reason for doing so. The Supreme Court will
strictly scrutinize the government's justification for limiting this right and
probably strike down such a law.
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The right to vote has been viewed as a right, as a privilege, or as
a duty. As a right, it is conceived of as an inalienable attribute inherent in
the individual. As a privilege, right to vote is considered as being conferred
on the individual by law and is subject to limitations imposed by governing
authorities. Some theories rely on the classical Greek concept of the exercise
of the right to vote as the citizen's duty to participate actively in the
welfare of the community.
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Today universal or near-universal suffrage prevails in most of the
world, although the extent to which true choice may be exerted varies widely.
The requirements of voting show great uniformity in different regions and under
different systems of government. The right to vote is almost invariably limited
to citizens of a minimum age between 18 and 25, depending on the country, and
to residents of the locality. Excluded are the mentally ill and convicted
felons. In some nations women's right to vote is still subject to
qualifications. In other parts of the world property ownership and racial requirements
for voting may be enforced. These qualifications for right to vote, and others
based on religion, education, and taxpaying, were universal during the Middle
Ages, and many persisted well into the 20th century. Most exclusions reflected
the fears of those with power that extending the vote to individuals who had no
stake in the existing order (the young, the poor, and the itinerant) would lead
to instability.
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In the United States at the time the Constitution was written, it
is estimated that only 6 percent of the adult male population were entitled to
vote. Subsequent democratic changes in American society eliminated religious
and property qualifications. Racial barriers to voting existed legally until
the Fifteenth Amendment to
the Constitution was ratified after the Civil War. Thereafter, blacks were
excluded from the right to vote in some states through such devices as the
white primary, the poll tax, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses. These
were gradually interpreted to be unconstitutional under the 15th Amendment or
under the Equal Protection of the Laws clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Women
were given the franchise in 1920 under the Nineteenth Amendment, and
the right to vote was extended to 18-year-olds in 1971 under the Twenty-sixth Amendment.
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