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However, that's orthogonal to the issue; documentation of your right to vote is not one of the requirements of possessing that right. (as parent said, "A perso
by ColanR 7y ago
However, that's orthogonal to the issue; documentation of your right to vote is not one of the requirements of possessing that right. (as parent said, "A person's right to vote exists with or without documentation.") It is a dramatic improvement that the people with the right to vote has been expanded since the 1700s, but what you said doesn't actually speak against the basic idea that documentation is not relevant to the exercise of ones rights.
As an aside: once documentation is required, we enter a position where we do not have our rights until proven otherwise.
- dymk 7y agoHow do you prevent fraudulent voting without being able to tie a vote back to a real, documented person?
- paulddraper 7y agoHow is it irrelevant to their point? Property deeds and literacy tests are documentation, yes?
- mieseratte 7y ago> However, that's orthogonal to the issue; documentation of your right to vote is not one of the requirements of possessing that right. According to whom exactly? As others have pointed out in this discussion, that's not how the US system was designed. There is no inalienable right to vote.
- reaperducer 7y agoAccording to whom exactly? The 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution.
- Spooky23 7y agoAmendments to the constitution have establish the right. As a society, we decided that tenants, people of non-white races, women, and 18-20 year olds should be allowed to vote. We also eliminated odious standards like counting then-slaves as 60% human.
- ghettoimp 7y agoI'm no expert and could be missing something. But it doesn't look to me like we have an "inalienable" right to vote. Various amendments do say that our right to vote can't be revoked for certain specific reasons, e.g.,: - The 15th amendment prohibits denying the right to vote on certain grounds (race, color) but doesn't go beyond that. - The 19th prohibits denying the right to vote based on sex. - The 24th prohibits denying the right to vote (in certain federal elections) based on outstanding tax bills. - The 26th prohibits denying citizens over 18 the right to vote based on age. But this seems like a weirdly specific list. If the reason isn't on the list, is it still fair game? For instance, AFAIK some states don't let convicted felons vote.
- Spooky23 7y agoI identify strongly as an advocate for democracy. We have a second amendment that talks about well-regulated militia broadly interpreted to mean all sorts of things, some I agree with, some I do not. Likewise, we have multiple, progressive amendments to the constitution with a clear goal of enabling voting to the broadest possible scope. I live in a state that requires that you be a citizen, age 18, and not be in prison or on parole. I think that’s a fair compromise over disqualification of felons, as you create 2nd tier of citizen by denying that right.
- anigbrowl 7y agoIt's orthogonal, but if you don't see how the shift in (the orthogonal) political power structures has affected the exercise of basic rights, then you probably won't see future violations of rights coming as effectively because you're not fully alert for them.