4 ms·

Maybe the actual rights have clauses on them that go, "provided that you haven't stolen, defrauded, or assaulted anyone," and you're just reading the abridged v

Maybe the actual rights have clauses on them that go, "provided that you haven't stolen, defrauded, or assaulted anyone," and you're just reading the abridged version.

ceejayoz 7y ago
It's actually that the Constitution doesn't really define who can vote. It forbids certain sorts of discrimination - gender, race, age (past a point), but leaves the rest up to the states. California could, as far as I can tell, forbid voting by blondes, or by people who need glasses, or ban anyone who's had ice cream in the last month from the polls.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > California could, as far as I can tell, forbid voting by blondes, or by people who need glasses. Not unless the Supreme Court decided to throw out, like, the whole of 14th Amendment Due Process and clause jurisprudence, where it comes to standards for impairing or discriminating in fundamental rights and voting’s status as such a right. (I wouldn't put it past this court, but even for them it would be an unusual break with settled Constitutional case law.) And even then, Constitutionally, only blonde females and males under 21 if it doesn't want to lose seats in the House, since another part of the 14th Amendment (though this has historically not been enforced) makes denying males 21+ the vote for any reason other than conviction of crime mean reduction, in equal proportion, to House representation.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    > And even then, Constitutionally, only blonde females and males under 21 if it doesn't want to lose seats in the House, since another part of the 14th Amendment (though this has historically not been enforced) makes denying males 21+ the vote for any reason other than conviction of crime mean reduction, in equal proportion, to House representation. That just further highlights the bafflingly cobbled-together nature of the whole ruleset.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      Women and 18-21 year olds got the right to vote after the 14th Amendment, and the way the Constitution gets amended (new articles that do not specifically update the provisions they modify) is prone to produce (at least, in the bare text; with litigation, some of this gets smoothed over in case law, though there's not a lot of litigation on the provision at issue to do that) incomplete updates and inconsistency.
      - DrScump 7y ago
        Women and 18-21 year olds got the right to vote after the 14th Amendment To clarify: After, but not as a result of. (See Amendments 19 and 26)
        dragonwriter 7y ago
        Right, as a result of later amendments, hence why the penalty provisions of the 14th Amendment related to disenfranchisement don't take them into account. (Sharp observers will note that race also wasn't explicitly a prohibited category until a later Amendment—the 15th—as the three civil war amendments, 13th-15th, were not ratified simultaneously despite being a related package, so blacks were considered in the disenfranchisement penalty clause before they had an individually-protected right to vote.)

Maybe the actual rights have clauses on them that go, "provided that you haven't stolen, defrauded, or assaulted anyone," and you're just reading the abridged version.

ceejayoz 7y ago

It's actually that the Constitution doesn't really define who can vote. It forbids certain sorts of discrimination - gender, race, age (past a point), but leaves the rest up to the states. California could, as far as I can tell, forbid voting by blondes, or by people who need glasses, or ban anyone who's had ice cream in the last month from the polls.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> California could, as far as I can tell, forbid voting by blondes, or by people who need glasses. Not unless the Supreme Court decided to throw out, like, the whole of 14th Amendment Due Process and clause jurisprudence, where it comes to standards for impairing or discriminating in fundamental rights and voting’s status as such a right. (I wouldn't put it past this court, but even for them it would be an unusual break with settled Constitutional case law.) And even then, Constitutionally, only blonde females and males under 21 if it doesn't want to lose seats in the House, since another part of the 14th Amendment (though this has historically not been enforced) makes denying males 21+ the vote for any reason other than conviction of crime mean reduction, in equal proportion, to House representation.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  > And even then, Constitutionally, only blonde females and males under 21 if it doesn't want to lose seats in the House, since another part of the 14th Amendment (though this has historically not been enforced) makes denying males 21+ the vote for any reason other than conviction of crime mean reduction, in equal proportion, to House representation. That just further highlights the bafflingly cobbled-together nature of the whole ruleset.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Women and 18-21 year olds got the right to vote after the 14th Amendment, and the way the Constitution gets amended (new articles that do not specifically update the provisions they modify) is prone to produce (at least, in the bare text; with litigation, some of this gets smoothed over in case law, though there's not a lot of litigation on the provision at issue to do that) incomplete updates and inconsistency.
    - DrScump 7y ago
      Women and 18-21 year olds got the right to vote after the 14th Amendment To clarify: After, but not as a result of. (See Amendments 19 and 26)
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        Right, as a result of later amendments, hence why the penalty provisions of the 14th Amendment related to disenfranchisement don't take them into account. (Sharp observers will note that race also wasn't explicitly a prohibited category until a later Amendment—the 15th—as the three civil war amendments, 13th-15th, were not ratified simultaneously despite being a related package, so blacks were considered in the disenfranchisement penalty clause before they had an individually-protected right to vote.)