In November 2018, Florida’s Amendment 4 could restore the right to vote to people who faced disenfranchisement for the rest of their lives because of a felony criminal conviction. Controlling and limiting who can vote has a long American tradition. But the tradition of slowly but surely expanding the universe of who is eligible to vote is also a key part of the American experience.
While the franchise has increased and contracted in the United States since the founding, it’s somewhat rare for voters themselves to have the opportunity to enlarge the franchise. That makes Amendment 4 a special chance for Florida voters to give more fellow citizens the right to vote.
How much has the franchise multiplied over the history of America? As Harvard Professor Jill Lapore reminds us, “[i]n the first Presidential election, only six per cent of Americans were eligible to vote.” The restrictions on who could vote have ranged from property ownership requirements, poll tax payments, race, religion, gender and age.
Now the United States has nearly full adult franchise. One of the big exceptions to full franchise is that an estimated 6 million Americans are left without the vote because of a previous criminal conviction. To put that number in perspective, that’s more than the entire population of Finland.
Interestingly, the expansion of the franchise was rarely enacted by voters themselves. Frequently it was accomplished either by legislative action or through Constitutional Amendments, which require state legislatures for ratification. For instance, the Fifteenth Amendment bars discrimination of voting rights by race, the Nineteenth Amendment bars discrimination of voting rights by gender, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment bars discrimination on the basis of age for voters aged 18 years or older, and the Twenty-Fourth Amendment bars the use of poll taxes in federal elections. But these expansions of the vote were not in the hands of rank and file voters.
Legislation has also been a source of bolstered voting rights. While the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1870) ostensibly granted the right to vote regardless of race, further legislative action was necessary to fully grant the right to vote to people of color. For instance, Native Americans (American Indians) got the right to vote from the Snyder Act of 1924. Arguably, in much of the nation, African Americans did not have a meaningful right to vote until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. And in Wyoming, the first territory to give women the vote, the vote was expanded by the legislative council in the territory (its equivalent of a state legislature), not general electorate in the territory.
One of the exceptions to the general trend of keeping the question of broadening the franchise out of the hands of the electorate is the experience of Western states and suffrage for women. Idaho granted the vote to women in 1896 and Washington State granted women the vote in 1910, each of them through ballot measures. Following this movement in the Western states was California Proposition 4 for Women’s Suffrage from 1911. A campaign slogan used by supporters of California Proposition 4 was, “For the long work day, for the taxes we pay, for the laws we obey, we want something to say!”
A year later, Arizona’s male citizens also voted to extend the franchise to women in 1912 through the Arizona Suffrage and Right to Hold Office for Women Amendment. Oregon also granted women the vote in 1912. Montana gave women suffrage in 1914. Women in South Dakota got the vote in 1918.
Another example of voters voting to expand the vote is that, in 1943, Georgia became the first state to lower the voting age to 18. The slogan “old enough to fight, old enough to vote” rallied support for the Georgia measure. Twelve years later, Kentucky also lowered the voting age through ballot measure. Much later, voters in Alaska in 1970 voted to lower the voting age to 18. Oklahoma lowered the voting age in 1971. In 1971 the Twenty-Sixth Amendment made the voting age 18 everywhere.
Poverty has also been a way to limit the franchise. Maine voters eliminated a ban on voting by paupers in 1965. Paupers also got the vote in Massachusetts in 1972. Washington State voters voted to get rid of its poll tax in 1922. Additionally, Maine voters repealed the state’s poll tax in 1978.
The oddest example of voters enlarging the franchise is probably from Wisconsin. In 1975, Wisconsin, where apparently dueling was such a problem that it made it into the state’s constitution as a bar to voting and holding office, Wisconsin voters eliminated the elective ban on people who had been involved in duels.
There’s even been religious discrimination in voting. Steven Mintz reports that many of the 13 original American colonies imposed religious tests. “Catholics were barred from voting in five colonies and Jews in four.” By 1790, all of the original 13 states had dropped these religious restrictions. But religious discrimination returned. In 1882, Congress passed a law Congress passed a law disenfranchising individuals in the territories of the United State who engaged in polygamy from voting – a clear swipe at Mormon voters. Mormons could not vote in Idaho until the state’s non-Mormon electorate finally voted to drop the language in the state constitution that had barred them from voting in 1982.
And in November 2018, Florida voters could join this noble American tradition of expanding the franchise. The Florida Constitution has disenfranchised ex-felons for over one hundred years. This robs one out of ten adults in Florida of the vote, more than 1.5 million people. The current prohibition is in Section VI of the Florida Constitution. Florida voters can change this through Amendment 4, which would automatically restore the right to vote to convicted felons who have served their time and their prohibition, so long as their conviction was not for murder or a sexual felony. A 60% “yes” vote is necessary for adoption. Amendment 4 could be an epic chance for the current electorate to unlock the vote for their fellow citizens.