Voting
Registration
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What's Involved
Throughout history, voting has been viewed as a civic duty and a privilege. Just as you
take the initiative to get a driving license, you take the initiative to vote. In this
country, we first show our initiative by registering to vote.
North Dakota is the only state that doesn’t require people to register to vote.
Other states require voters to live within that state before they may vote, but the amount
of time varies. Some states require voters to live there for 30 days, while others only
require you to prove you live in the state. No state allows people in mental hospitals to
vote. All states deny the vote to convicted felons (except people who committed crimes
before they were 18). Some states deny the vote to the homeless. Certain constitutional
amendments guarantee certain voting rights.
- 15th Amendment (1870): No state may deny a person the right to vote because of
his/her race.
- 17th Amendment (1913): Any person who votes in state elections may also vote in
federal elections.
- 19th Amendment (1920): No state may deny a person the right to vote because of
his or her sex.
- 26th Amendment (1971): No state may deny the right to vote to a person who is at
least 18 year old.
You may find out exactly how to register to vote and what is required in your state by
checking out your state’s Office of Elections.
Voting Fraud
Voter registration laws were first passed in the late nineteenth century, in part, to
clean up elections and to prevent voting fraud. People would vote more than once in the
same election, vote in places where they didn’t live, and increase votes for a
particular candidate by voting under the names of people who had died. Voting fraud
existed well into the twentieth century. For example, in 1994, the assassin of Mexican
presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio twice registered to vote in Los Angeles
County. When the Justice Department was asked to investigate the problem of non-citizens
voting, it claimed that “There is no constitutional requirement nor federal law that
requires citizenship to vote in federal elections.” The ambiguity was corrected by an
amendment in an immigration-reform bill (1996).
The law now clearly states that felons and non-citizens may not vote in the U.S. But as
late as 1996, The Fair Elections Group maintained it had found voters whose addresses were
vacant lots and who were children, cats, and dogs.
Registration Discrimination
Historically, until the 1970s, voter registration laws in the South were designed to
prevent minorities, immigrants, and poor whites from voting. Southern states established
literacy tests, poll taxes, and subjectively administered “good character”
reviews, to prevent these groups of people from voting. These discriminatory voter
registration laws were part of a network of laws called “Jim Crow” laws, which
codified racial segregation in the South and Southwest and eventually reached into every
aspect of life.
Beginning in 1964, Congress outlawed registration laws that discriminated against
minorities, immigrants, and the poor. The 24th Amendment (1964), outlawed charging people
money to vote (called a “poll tax”) in presidential or congressional elections.
In 1965, Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act. Often called the most effective civil
rights law ever enacted, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed the worst Jim Crow laws.
Later congressional amendments and Supreme Court decisions outlawed the rest.
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