The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the by Alexander Keyssar

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By Alexander Keyssar

An esteemed historian bargains a compelling re-thinking of the trail the USA has taken towards its objective of common suffrage so much american citizens take without any consideration their correct to vote, whether or not they decide to workout it or no longer. however the heritage of suffrage within the U.S. is, in fact,the tale of a fight to accomplish this correct via our society's marginalized teams. within the correct to Vote, Duke historian Alexander Keyssar explores the evolution of suffrage over the process the nation's background. interpreting the various positive aspects of the heritage of the best to vote within the U.S.-class, ethnicity, race, gender, faith, and age-the publication explores the stipulations below which American democracy has accelerated and reduced in size through the years. Keyssar provides convincing proof that the historical past of the proper to vote has now not been considered one of a gentle background of enlargement and lengthening inclusion, noting that balloting rights gotten smaller considerably within the U.S. among 1850 and 1920. Keyssar additionally offers a debatable thesis: that the first issue selling the growth of the suffrage has been battle and the first elements selling contraction or delaying growth were category pressure and sophistication clash.

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Extra info for The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States

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7 In addition, there were limitations on the franchise that had more to do with social membership in the community than with a person’s independence or stake in society. 9 As these details suggest, aside from property qualifications, there were no firm principles governing colonial voting rights, and suffrage laws accordingly were quite varied. 11 Absentee landowners were enfranchised in Virginia in 1736, which often meant that they could vote in more than one place. 12 Of equal importance, the qualifications to vote in local elections—especially in the cities and larger towns—often differed from those needed to vote for colonial or provincial officers.

In other counties, militiamen and local citizens appointed their own election judges, who in turn allowed all associators to vote. The state’s governing authorities, however, displayed little tolerance for these rebellions, ordering new elections with strict enforcement of the property qualifications. The constitutional convention itself, perhaps chastened by the tumult, significantly lowered, but did not abolish, the property requirement; and the state’s Declaration of Rights reiterated the principle that the right of suffrage ought to be possessed by “every man having property in .

27 Those who opposed any expansion of suffrage also relied heavily on the belief that in order to vote a person had to be independent. This venerable 10 The Right to Vote idea, a staple of republican thought in the eighteenth century, was given influential expression in the late 1760s by Sir William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England. The true reason of requiring any qualification, with regard to property, in voters, is to exclude such persons as are in so mean a situation that they are esteemed to have no will of their own.

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