Your Right to Vote

Did you know that the U. S. Constitution did NOT originally define who had the right to vote? It deferred that decision to each state. As you can imagine, this created much confusion. Many states only allowed Caucasian male property owners the franchise. Some allowed Caucasian males with taxable income to vote. New Jersey even allowed women to vote if they met the property requirement. In some places freed slaves and non-white Americans were allowed to vote, again if they met the property requirement. Many states and local jurisdictions started requiring poll taxes be paid to vote and literacy tests passed. By the time of the Civil War, most white males were allowed to vote regardless if they owned property. By not clearly defining the right to vote, the framers of the Constitution created chaos. Many citizens were kept from voting because they were deemed to be "undesirable". Now, if any of this is beginning to sound like what is again happening in our country, you might want to start paying attention.

These rights have been challenged before and we have several Amendments that guarantee citizens' rights to vote. In 1965, our Congress also passed the Voting Rights Act. See this link for brief timeline of voting rights up to 2014:  https://www.aclu.org/timeline-history-voting-rights-act As you can see, citizens are again having to face efforts by some in power to keep others from be able to vote.

Please don't take your right to vote for granted. Learn if you can vote this year by clicking this link:  http://www.canivote.org/  Then, please check this link to learn all you can about voting and access resources to help you exercise your rights. http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/Voting/Learn.shtml

You know the old saying, "If you don't use it, you'll lose it." Well, that just might come true in regard to your voting rights. I would also encourage you to vote for Democrats because they are trying to protect citizens' right to vote.