Who should be allowed to vote?

Voting has come to stay as the preferred medium that countries all over the world select their

presidents and other members of their governments.

In an attempt to answer the question: “Who should be allowed to vote?” I would like to visit

the voting history of the United States. I believe the past issues about voting in the United

States has shaped what voting is today and that would essentially help mu discussion about

this topic.

By 1776, voting was controlled by the individual state legislatures’ and only white men age

21 and older with land ownership are allowed to vote [ CITATION Sec19 \l 2057 ]. In 1848, saw

Abolitionists and pro-women suffrage groups first meeting at Seneca Falls with common aim

of seeking the right o vote. The struggle continued until 1868 when the 14 th Amendment

granted African-Americans citizenship but no right to vote. By 1870 the 15 th Amendment

prevented Federal and State governments for denying the right to vote to citizens based on

race. However, women, Native Americans and Asian-Americans still did not have the right to

vote. Wyoming became the first State to grant voting rights to women in 1890. Thirty years

later, the 19th Amendment in 1920 granted women the right to vote in all fifty States but not

all Native American and Asian-American women can vote because they had no citizenship

status. The Indian Citizenship Act and McCarran-Walter acts passed in 1924 and 1952

respectively granted Native Americans and Asian- Americans the right to vote.

While the 15th Amendment to the US constitution states clearly that the “right of citizens of

the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State

on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”, other strategies were used to

disenfranchise black voters from voting, notable ones amongst them were: black voters must

pass a literacy test, mandating voters to pay a tax to cast a ballot, requiring black voters to get
a white person to “vouch” for them and the outright voter intimidation and violence against

African-American at polls. Thankfully, all of the above discriminatory barriers that kept

people of color from voting were removed when congress passed the Voting Rights Act in

1965[ CITATION Pan19 \l 2057 ]. The foregoing brief history about voting in the United States

portrays how far the nation has come as far as who should be allowed to vote is concerned.

People has been denied the right to vote based on race, sex and age.

Currently the constitution of the United States of America allows any one 18 years and older

to vote. With the authority to decide whether or not felons are allowed to vote given to the

states[ CITATION von15 \l 2057 ] . And the second provision of the Voters Right Act (VRA) of

1965 protects people with mental disability from unjust discrimination based on the ability to

complete a test that is not required of all voters[ CITATION Okw18 \l 2057 ].

Irrespective of all the above provisions in the constitution the debate on who should be

allowed to vote continues. Some people are of the view that everyone should be allowed to

vote but it should be limited to people who prove they have a high political knowledge and

analytical complexity with open mindedness[ CITATION Sum16 \l 2057 ]. A typical example of

such person is Jason Brennan who writes “people who exercise power over me, including

other voters, should have to do so in a competent and morally reasonable way. Otherwise, as

a matter of justice, they ought to be excluded from holding political power, including the

power to vote”[ CITATION Bre11 \l 2057 ] . The foregoing suggest that voters who are qualified

to vote per the current criteria for voting , might not have enough knowledge about the

candidates or may even be biased in their evaluation of information. In fact this is a hard fact,

a lot of the electorates seldom have interest in politics. Brennan, further argues that if it is

okay to exclude all 17 year olds from voting with the claim that they are minors, why not the

so called old folks whose understanding of the issues is as bad or worse than that of an

average child?
Even though I agree with Brennan’s diagnosis of the problem, I am quiet skeptical about his

proposed solutions. In a real-world governments cannot be trusted with implementing this

competency principle of voting in any kind without bias. Instead of limiting voting to the

knowledgeable, they are likely to structure tests or any other similar mechanisms to favor the

party in power. Am of the view that we keep voting as it is how and rather attempt to mitigate

the problem caused by political ignorance by limiting and decentralizing the power of

government, not transferring it to more knowledgeable hands.

References
Brennan, J., 2011. The Right of a Competent Electorate. The Philosophical Quarterly,
61(245), pp. 700-724.

Okwerekwu, J. A. et al., 2018. Voting by people with mental illness. American Academy of
Pschiarty and the Law, 46(4), pp. 1-8.

Panetta, G. & Reaney, O., 2019. Business insider. [Online]

Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/when-women-got-the-right-to-vote-american-
voting-rights-timeline-2018-10
[Accessed 26 June 2019].

State, S. o., 2019. sos.wa.gov. [Online]

Available at: https://www.sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/history-of-voting-in-america-
timeline.pdf
[Accessed 26 June 2019].

Sumin, I., 2016. The Washington Post. [Online]

Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/2016/09/03/democracy-vs-epistacracy/?
noredirect=on&utm_term=.0ba99e1503e6
[Accessed 26 June 2019].

von Spakovsky, H. A. & Clegg, R., 2015. Felon voting and Unconstitutional Congressional
Outreach. Legal Memorandum, Issue 145, pp. 1-11.
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