Imagine living in a nation where only rich white men could vote?

Oh wait, we tried that and it was rejected by democracy. 

The founders believed voting rights were state’s rights and consequently each state had its own voting requirements, and in the 1700s that largely meant in order to cast a ballot, you had to be a white man who owned property. 

Some states also had a religious test intended to restrict voting to rich white men who were regarded as Christians. 

In the early 1800s, states began loosening voter restrictions, removing the land ownership requirement and religious test.  Still, people of color could not vote and women could not vote. 

After the Civil War and during Reconstruction in 1870, the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was adopted, supposedly guaranteeing the rights of all men to vote, regardless of race. Almost immediately, states and local voting districts began circumventing the 15th Amendment with voter suppression measures designed to do one thing and one thing only: Prevent Black men from voting. 

The most successful means of voter suppression were poll taxes, used to disenfranchise voters, especially in the South, beginning in 1890. In many cases, poor white voters were exempted from having to pay the tax before casting a ballot. The reason was obvious.

The poll tax was commonplace in Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia, as well as a few Northern states that had large Black populations. 

It was not until the adoption of the 24th Amendment in 1964 that the poll tax was abolished but that did not, of course, end voter suppression. Poll watchers and even a KKK presence outside of polling places were designed to intimidate would-be voters. 

Literacy tests were also a common practice requiring Black voters to take a rigorous exam with very difficult questions while the requirement was either waived for white voters or they were given very simple questions. Again, the reason was obvious. 

And, perhaps we forget that women — white women — were not guaranteed the vote until 1919 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment. The suffrage movement was marked by protests, marches, lobbying and civil disobedience. Women fought for many years to have the basic American right to vote. Women were not given the right to vote, they took it. 

Why had women been denied the right to vote? Were they not American? The answer is not difficult. Rich, white men historically wanted to elect rich, white men to control a nation that protected the interests of rich, white men. 

It is an ugly truth but it is our history. 

While some want to deny voter suppression now exists, we have a long history of it in the U.S., that goes all the way back to 1788. 

All forms of voter suppression, including the new wave of restrictions across the U.S., are antithetical to democracy and a threat to our liberty. 

Imagine living in a nation where women cannot vote, where people who don’t go to church cannot vote, where people of color cannot vote, where people who are not rich cannot vote. 

Oh wait, we tried that. 

The right to vote should be an American right – not a rich landowner right, not a religious right, not a male right, not a white right — but an American right.