Suffrage: Is the right to vote an inherent right or a contingent privilege?

“ Is universal manhood suffrage true in theory and best in practice for a representative government? Should an educational qualification be made a condition of enjoying the right of suffrage? Should a property qualification be made a condition of enjoying the right of suffrage? Is suffrage a natural right or a political privilege? Matson, p. 145: Briefs and references.
Manhood suffrage. Askew, 1906, p. 150: Briefs.—Gibson, p. 158: Briefs.
Suffrage in the United States should be restricted by an educational qualification. ”

“ Men came gradually to believe that the suffrage was not a right but a privilege, and that the capacity of the individual to use the vote in the public interest was the factor which should determine whether or not he should enjoy the suffrage. This changed viewpoint reflected itself in several important shifts in the suffrage movement.
414. SHIFTS IN THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT.—To a considerable extent the decline of the doctrine of natural rights was accompanied by increased restrictions upon the right to vote. ”

“ So it seems to us that if the right to vote is not a natural right, there is no such thing as a natural right in human relations. The right to freedom and the right to a ballot both spring from the same source. The right to vote is only the right to a legitimate use of freedom. It is plain that if a man is not free to govern himself, and to have a voice in the taxation of his own property, he is not really free in any enlightened sense. ”

“ I will read from the highest American authority upon our politico-constitutional questions, partly in support of my proposition that the right to vote is a natural right, and also to show that the assumed claim of one part of the people to exclude another from all share in the Government has the most doubtful and shadowy foundation in right, and to an American it needs no evidence to show that a portion of the people thus excluded are in a state of vassalage. ”

“ Secondly, that government by election and representation has its origin in the natural and eternal rights of man; for whether a man be his own lawgiver, as he would be in a state of nature; or whether he exercises his portion of legislative sovereignty in his own person, as might be the case in small democracies where all could assemble for the formation of the laws by which they were to be governed; or whether he exercises it in the choice of persons to represent him in a national assembly of representatives, the origin of the right is the same in all cases. ”

“ The truth seems to be, that the right of voting, like many other rights, is one, which, whether it has a fixed foundation in natural law or not, has always been treated in the practice of nations, as a strictly civil right, derived from, and regulated by each society, according to its own circumstances and interests. ”

“ The most obvious, interesting, and important view of the Catholic in his relations to the century is that of voter. Suffrage, or the privilege of voting for our rulers, and indirectly making the laws by which we are to be governed, is not a natural right. It is an acquired privilege, and only becomes a right when conveyed and acknowledged by competent authority. Once obtained, it cannot be abrogated, and can only be lost by revolution, the fruit of gross political misconduct, or by voluntary neglect and disuse.
The right of suffrage bestows special prerogatives upon its possessors. ”

“ If this right to vote be what the Senator from Indiana declares it to be, a natural and inalienable right, then you have no more right to deny it to a person who is under the age of twenty-one than you have to deny it to a person who is over the age of twenty-one years. Sir, the difference is radical. Voting is no right; it is a privilege granted, a franchise which is granted to certain classes, more or less extended according to the supposed expediency which shall control the minds of those who frame the constitution of government for a people. ”

“ It seems to me there is a wrong done to those who are shut out from any participation in the Government, and that it is a violation of their rights; and what odds does it make whether you call it a natural, or conventional, or artificial right? I contend that when you set up a Government you shall call every man who has arrived at the years of discretion, who has committed no crime, into your community and ask him to participate in setting up that Government; and if you shut him out without any reason, you do him a wrong, one of the greatest wrongs that you can inflict upon a man. ”

“ Equality of natural property is the subject of this little essay. Every individual in the world is born therein with legitimate claims on a certain kind of property, or its equivalent.
The right of voting for persons charged with the execution of the laws that govern society is inherent in the word Liberty, and constitutes the equality of personal rights. But even if that right (of voting) were inherent in property, which I deny, the right of suffrage would still belong to all equally, because, as I have said, all individuals have legitimate birthrights in a certain species of property. ”

“ Who shall say, that one man is not as well qualified, as a voter, at eighteen years of age, as another is at twenty-five, or a third at forty; and far better, than most men are at eighty? And if any society is invested with authority to settle the matter of the age and sex of voters, according to its own view of its policy, or convenience, or Justice, who shall say, that it has not equal authority, for like reasons, to settle any other matter regarding the rights, qualifications, and duties of voters? ”

“ Aristocratic privilege, intrenched in power, has grudgingly given way to the demands of manhood rights, and manhood suffrage, and even to-day, in the attempt to rehabilitate itself, it is bold enough to make the ridiculous assertion that the right of suffrage, even in a republican form of government, is not a natural and inherent right of citizenship, but merely a privilege to be granted or withheld at pleasure by a select few for whose assumed authority no power on earth or in heaven is responsible. ”

“ Among these, I claim, is the right of every voter to cast one honest vote and have it counted; that every citizen, rich or poor, native or naturalized, white or black, should have equal civil and political rights, and that every man of lawful age should be allowed to exercise his right to vote, without distinction of race or color or previous condition. I charge, among other things, that these constitutional rights and privileges have been disregarded by the Democratic party, especially in the southern states. ”

“ And thus, surely, has that race earned the right of full citizenship and equality in the State. Even Jefferson declared, more than half a century ago, that whoever "fights and pays taxes" has the right of suffrage against the world. But the right of humanity, of manhood, is older and of higher and diviner appointment than any other. If the right of liberty and the pursuit of happiness be the gift and endowment of the Creator, then surely is the right to the ballot the only possible or conceivable assurance and guaranty of it in republican governments. ”

“ No doubt, the adoption of the manhood suffrage theory prepared the way for this result, first by promulgating the false doctrine of a natural right to vote, and second by weakening the electorate. When the principle of a qualified electorate was abandoned, we lost the only sane and safe basis on which a democratic government can possibly exist; once reject the rule of fitness, and there is no valid reason why all the deficient and worthless should not have their say in government, and the way is laid open for rule by ignorant and incapable numbers instead of by knowledge and capacity. ”

“ Thus by disposing of the vague idea of a natural right to vote, the way is cleared for a consideration of the proper qualifications which Society should require from voters. That there are men and classes of men naturally incapable of exercising the judgment necessary to cast a ballot helpful to the community is known to all of us. ”

“ The right of voting, or the privilege of voting, is a right or privilege arising under the Constitution of the State, and not of the United States. The qualifications are different in the different States. Citizenship, age, sex, residence, are variously required in the different States, or may be so. If the right belongs to any particular person, it is because such person is entitled to it by the laws of the State where he offers to exercise it, and not because of citizenship of the United States. ”

“ It cannot be safely conjectured what the Supreme Court will say when it squarely faces the suffrage laws of the South in their relation to the Fifteenth Amendment. Until then, each is entitled to his opinion. That the citizenship, age, sex, and residence qualifications are in perfect conformity to the Amendment there is no doubt. The qualifications of tax payment, property, and education existed long before the Fifteenth Amendment in the States of the men most active in securing the adoption of that Amendment. ”

“ Every free white male who has attained the age of twenty-one years, and who has been a resident of the State twelve months next preceding the election, and the last six months thereof in the parish in which he offers to vote, and who shall be a citizen of the United States, shall have the right of voting, but no voter, on removing from one parish to another, within the State, shall lose the right of voting in the former until he shall have acquired it in the latter. ”

“ The people give their votes for a governor at the time and place of voting for representatives and senators; and on the second day of the succeeding session of the general assembly, the two houses, by a joint ballot, elect for governor one of the two candidates who have the greatest number of votes. Right of suffrage is possessed by every white male citizen of the United States, of the age of twenty-one years, who has resided in the county in which he offers to vote one year next preceding the election, and who, in the last six months prior to said election, has paid a state tax. ”

“ Every person who shall be chosen or appointed to any office of trust or profit shall, before entering upon the duties thereof, take an oath to support the constitution of the United States and of this state, and also an oath of office. 27. In all elections, all white male inhabitants above the age of 21 years, having resided in the state six months next preceding the election, shall enjoy the right of an elector; but no person shall be entitled to vote except in the county or district in which he shall actually reside at the time of the election. ”

“ Resolved that all free white men of the age of twenty-one and upwards, who are natural born citizens of this State, or of any one of the United States, and all who have been naturalized and admitted to the rights and privileges as citizens of the United States by our laws, and who, being inhabitants of this State, and who have a fixed or known residence in the county or election district, six months immediately preceding the day of election, shall be entitled to vote for members of either house of the General Assembly, in and for the county or district in which they may reside. ”

“ When a qualification to vote is regulated by years, it is placed on the firmest possible ground; because the qualification is such, as nothing but dying before the time can take away; and the equality of Rights, as a principle, is recognized in the act of regulating the exercise. But when Rights are placed upon, or made dependant upon property, they are on the most precarious of all tenures. "Riches make themselves wings, and fly away," and the rights fly with them; and thus they become lost to the man when they would be of most value. ”

“ Qualified Voters
Every citizen of the United States who is at least eighteen years of age, who meets registration residency requirements which may be prescribed by law, and who is qualified to vote under this article, may vote in any state or local election. ”

“ Every citizen of the GDR who has reached the age of 18 on election day is entitled to vote in elections to the People's Chamber. (2) Is not entitled to vote: 1. who is incapacitated legally, 2. who has been deprived of his civil rights as a result of a final judgment. (3) The right to vote rests with citizens who are under temporary guardianship or care for frailty because of a mental illness or because of a serious misdevelopment of the personality of disease value or because of intellectual impairment. ”

“ The qualifications and disqualifications of the persons having the right to vote in the referendum must be close to the qualifications and disqualifications of the persons having the right to vote in the last election before the day of coming into force of this Constitution, save the age, [in respect of which] the persons aged not lower than eighteen years on the day of the referendum shall be the persons having the rights to vote in the referendum. ”

“ All citizens, and such other persons in the State as may be determined by law, without distinction of sex who have reached the age of eighteen years who are not disqualified by law and comply with the provisions of the law relating to the election of members of Dáil Éireann, shall have the right to vote at an election for members of Dáil Éireann. ”

“ Except as required by the Constitution, no citizen of the United States who is otherwise qualified to vote in any State or political subdivision in any primary or in any election shall be denied the right to vote in any such primary or election on account of age if such citizen is eighteen years of age or older. ”

“ As to property and education, there are some plausible arguments in favor of such qualifications, but they are all alike unsatisfactory, illogical and unjust. A limited suffrage creates a privileged class, and is based on the false idea that government is the natural arbiter of its citizens, while in fact it is the creature of their will. In the old days of the colonies when the property qualification was five pounds—that being just the price of a jackass—Benjamin Franklin facetiously asked, "If a man must own a jackass in order to vote, who does the voting, the man or the jackass?" ”

“ In determining what those other considerations should be, it is obvious that property rights, and the qualities which create and preserve property, are of first availability and importance, and that the neglect and oversight of these rights and qualities constitute the most glaring defects of popular government. The property qualification is obviously that most readily applied to the electorate and its institution is a return to the natural and original practice of the American people. ”

“ Where the bulk of the coloured race are obviously unfit for political power, a qualification based on property and education might be established which should permit the upper section of that race to enjoy the suffrage. Such a qualification would doubtless exclude some of the poorest and most ignorant whites, and might on that ground be resisted. ”

“ Respecting that purification and elevation of the ballot-box, for which so many of our thoughtful citizens are now pleading with more than usual earnestness, our own thought is that it can best be accomplished by the establishment and strict enforcement of an educational qualification for voters, and by a residence in the United States of at least ten years, before the voting privilege shall be bestowed. No man should be allowed to vote until he can read and write. ”

“ The property qualification for suffrage is, to my mind, an invasion of natural right, which elevates mere property to an equality with life and personal liberty, and it ought never to be imposed. But, however that may be, its application has no relation to sex, and its only object is to secure the exercise of the suffrage under a stronger sense of obligation and responsibility. The same is true of the qualifications of sanity, education and obedience to the laws, which exclude dementia, ignorance and crime from participation in the sovereignty. ”

“ I want to see whether these young sprigs of the press do me justice. You know, children, I don't read such small stuff as letters, I read men and nations. I can see through a millstone, though I can't see through a spelling-book. What a narrow idea a reading qualification is for a voter! I know and do what is right better than many big men who read. And there's that property qualification! just as bad. As if men and women themselves, who made money, were not of more value than the thing they made. If I were a delegate to the Constitutional Convention I could make suffrage as clear as daylight ”

“ Partisans of aristocracy say, those who have reason and right on their side. But how are we to ascertain who they are? We have no criterion for recognizing the bad and incapable as we have for distinguishing the infirm, the lame, and the diseased. Education is not a sufficient criterion of political capacity, for it does not do away with prejudices or with selfishness. Restricted suffrage, according to the lessons of experience, has exhibited the same vices as the suffrages of the greater number—corruptibility, prejudice, vanity, ignorance, distrust of liberty, and dependence. ”

“ Behold now the fifty thousand respectable, well-intentioned, tolerably ignorant citizens who vote but are too busy with their own affairs to pay attention to politics, and as a consequence generally vote the party ticket or vote to please a friend. ”

“ We constantly read in the public press urgent invitations to vote, addressed to the careless or indifferent in politics, those who presumably have no compelling opinions and are therefore quite unprepared and unfit to vote. Instead of being warned of the wrong and danger of frivolous and ignorant voting, they are urged by the newspapers to go to the polls as if to take part in an amateur baseball game: “Come, join in; even if you don’t do it well; it’s the national game! There are prizes too, the spoils ”

“ Educate the Boys
Let us train up a new generation of voters—without diminishing our efforts to break up old party habits—who will have the courage of conviction and correct ideas regarding politics and economics. ”

“ As for you, I advise you to enter more strongly yet into politics. I advise every young man to do so. Always inform yourself; always do the best you can; always vote. Disengage yourself from parties. They have been useful, and to some extent remain so; but the floating, uncommitted electors, farmers, clerks, mechanics, the masters of parties—watching aloof, inclining victory this side or that side—such are the ones most needed, present and future. ”

“ You, my youthful reader, are already, or will be sooner or later, of an age to exercise the suffrage, to vote in municipal, state, and national elections, and will therefore enter the realm of so-called politics. Therefore it is for you, as a Catholic, a matter of conscience to learn what are the real, the true Catholic principles which are to be followed in reference to politics. ”

“ Childs, "to a point where the average man will vote intelligently without giving to politics more attention than he does at present." "Voting a straight ticket is not a matter of party loyalty so much as of not knowing what else to do, and split tickets will become common as soon as the list is reduced to a point where each candidate becomes in the mind of the voter a definite personality instead of a mere name on a long list. To make public office conspicuous can only be accomplished by making it stand out in solitude before the gaze of the voter. ”

“ If you are going to cast your vote for either of these corrupt capitalist parties and if you are going to give your support to those candidates who are committed to keep you in servitude how can you look yourselves in the face on the day following election without a blush of shame?
Sever your relations with these capitalist parties that are of the past. They disgrace the memory of Jefferson and Lincoln. Sever your relations with them and join this new party, this party of the future, especially you young people. It is vain to appeal to some of the older ones; they are petrified ”

“ There is no one who stands for his own ideas himself, by himself, a man. If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in147 you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic party or the Republican party (for at present machine and party are one) , or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era,—then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem, and you must be educated and drawn forward towards real life. ”

“ In a word, you must secure friends of every class: for show—men conspicuous for their office or name, who, even if they do not give any actual assistance in canvassing, yet add some dignity to the candidate; to maintain your just rights—magistrates, consuls first and then [Pg 372] tribunes; to secure the votes of the centuries—men of eminent popularity. Those who either have gained or hope to gain the vote of a tribe or century, or any other advantage, through your influence, take all pains to collect and secure. ”

“ Tim followed her into the dining room. “Uncle John says we can’t stand a black eye with election time coming off in the fall.”
“Why, what has that to do with it?” Joan asked.
Tim, always willing to display his knowledge, went on to explain that a man named William Berry from Western Ohio and called “Billy Berry” in political circles, was running for governor of the state. He had bought the Journal’s rival, The Morning Star, the only other newspaper in town, and was trying every way to “get in good with the people,” to insure his election. ”

“ I am reduced to nothing but bones and spirits; but the latter make me bear the inconvenience of the former, though they (I mean my bones) lie in a heap over one another like the bits of ivory at the game of straws.
It is very melancholy, at the instant I was getting quit of politics, to be visited with the only thing that is still more plaguing. However, I believe the fit of politics going off makes me support the new-comer better. Neither of them indeed will leave me plumper; (849) but if they will both leave me at peace, your ladyship knows it is all I have ever desired. ”

“ Politics are such a torment that I would advise every one I love not to mix with them. I have changed my circle here according to my wish, abandoning the rich and declining their dinners and parties, and associating entirely [263] with the class of science, of whom there is a valuable society here. Still, my wish is to be in the midst of our own families at home.... Kiss all the dear little ones for me; do not let Ellen forget me; and continue to me your love in return for the constant and tender attachment of yours affectionately.
To Mary Jefferson Eppes.
Philadelphia, Feb. 12th. ”

“ So when in this State, every year, thousands of boys come of age, we do not solemnly require them to tell us whether they wish to vote. We assume, of course, that they do, and we say to them, "Go, and upon the same terms with the rest of us, vote as you choose." But gentlemen say that they know a great many women who do not wish to vote, who think it is not ladylike, or whatever the proper term may be. Well, sir, I have known many men who have habitually abstained from politics because they were so "ungentlemanly," and who thought that no man could touch pitch without defilement. ”

“ You may say that the fact that a man is allowed to vote is no reason why he should be permitted to hold office, and business men or men of property will agree with you, for they are not easily tempted to seek public employment. Not so, however, your voter who has neither property nor settled income, nor business capacity sufficient to acquire either. His education often early tends towards office seeking; he is strongly advised by the newspapers and by twaddlers generally, to take part in the primaries, to become active in politics ”

“ Witness the arbitrary standards of age and residence for voters and office holders, the qualifications of teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc.; (2) in no ship is the management, whether in fair weather or foul, left to the untrained or those without pecuniary interest in the voyage; (3) suffrage should never be given or accepted by the unqualified as an expression of gratitude; the veterans might as well demand to be licensed as dentists as to be allowed to meddle with state affairs; (4) experience shows that manhood suffrage has not worked well but evil all over the world ”

“ The property test no longer exists. The fifteenth amendment provides that race, color, or previous servitude shall no longer be a disqualification. There are certain qualifications of age, of residence, and, in some instances of education, demanded; but these are such as all sane men may easily attain.
This report is not the place to discuss or vindicate the correctness of this theory. In so far as the opponents of woman suffrage are driven to deny it, for the purpose of an argument addressed to the American people, they are driven to confess that they are in the wrong. ”

“ The day, in my opinion, is not far distant when property qualifications, educational qualifications, and color qualifications, as precedent to the privilege of voting, will be known no more by the American people, but that intelligence and manhood will be the only qualifications necessary to entitle an American citizen to the privilege of an elector. ”

“ The ballot is not a right or a privilege. It is a solemn and dangerous duty. The ballot is force—physical force. It is a modern substitute for the bayonet—a device which has been used to prevent much civil strife. And yet man never votes away his right to a revolution. The Declaration of Independence embodies this fact—‘Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it—’ There you have the principle in full. ”