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Voting in America is Every Citizen’s Right

_{Editor's Note: Julie Powell, a former political editor at the Seattle Times, is a GM Financial marketing manager and published author who is sharing her expertise as part of our Black History Month coverage.}

One of the first ideas outlined for those studying to become U.S. citizens is the right — and indeed obligation — to vote. But Ali Rizvi didn’t need his study materials to convey to him the importance of voting.

“Since America is the most powerful country in the world, I wanted to participate in choosing the right person to represent us in front of the whole world,” said the GM Financial HRIS Specialist, who became a U.S. citizen in 2020.

Ali had voted in his native Pakistan, but says the process there is different. He was impressed with the ease of electronic voting here and the assistance he got from poll workers as a first-time voter.

As a newly minted citizen, Ali was excited to vote in the November 2020 election. But for many in this country, whose ancestors were born here, it wasn’t always as easy as finding your polling place and dropping your ballot in the box.

America’s History of Denying Voting Rights

For more than 100 years after the country’s founding, only white, male landowners had the right to vote. Every time a marginalized group in the U.S. gained the right, it took a Constitutional amendment to accomplish it.

After the Civil War, the 15^th Amendment gave freed slaves, and then only men, the right to vote. But it wasn’t until the civil rights movement and the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of the 1960s that African Americans could cast ballots without fear of being harmed.

Women didn’t gain the vote until 1920 with passage of the 19^th Amendment.

Native Americans — the first Americans — weren’t even considered citizens, much less did they have the right to vote until 1924.

And in 1971, Congress passed the 26^th Amendment granting 18-year-olds the right to vote. Those young adults had argued if they were old enough to be drafted and sent to war, they were old enough to vote.

Each of those groups fought hard for those rights. Countless African Americans were beaten or killed attempting to register and vote before the VRA was signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. Women marched and were jailed for more than 70 years before they could vote.

And, just as there were efforts in 2020 to overturn votes in some states that voted democratic, there have been attempts in recent years to turn back progress on voting rights.

In 2013, the Supreme Court, in its majority opinion, reasoning that minorities no longer needed protection, invalidated key provisions of the VRA. Those sections required states with a history of voter suppression to have federal clearance before they could make changes to their voting laws.

That ruling unleashed measures across the country that many consider are aimed at suppressing the vote in communities of color. More than 860 polling places across the country closed after 2013, according to the Leadership Conference Education Fund. As an example, the Indiana secretary of state closed 170 polling places in precincts with the state’s largest Latino and African American populations.

The effect of fewer polling places is longer lines for people who often can’t take off from work for hours to stand in those lines and a disproportionate burden on voters who may not have transportation to get to a voting place outside their neighborhood.

As of January 2021, there’s a bill pending in Congress, named for the late civil rights champion Rep. John Lewis, which would restore protections originally outlined in the VRA. It would reinstitute oversight of changes in voting laws, such as voter ID or reducing multilingual voting materials – practices that historically have been found to have discriminatory impact. Among the other provisions of the bill, it:

• Allows a federal court to put states or jurisdictions under review where the effect of a particular voting measure would lead to racial discrimination and deny citizens their right to vote.
• Increases transparency by requiring reasonable public notice for voting changes.
• Allows the U.S. attorney general authority to request federal observers to be present anywhere in the country where there is a serious threat of racial discrimination in voting.
• Allows for a preliminary injunction in cases where there is a need for immediate relief from discriminatory voting practices.
• Increases accessibility and protections for Native American and Alaska Native voters.

The bill passed the House in 2019 and currently sits with the Senate Judiciary Committee. A companion bill, H.R. 1, would expand voter registration, limit removing voters from voting polls and establish independent, nonpartisan redistricting commissions. That bill also passed the House in 2019 and is awaiting action in the Senate.

Going forward, it will take everyone participating in the electoral process to maintain voting rights for every citizen. Ali is committed to being one of those making his voice heard.

“My father told me you have to register yourself for voting,” he said. “He wanted me to have the voting experience.”

By Julie Powell, GM Financial

Julie Powell is a published author and former journalist. She grew up in a Chevy station wagon and has driven GM cars most of her life, including a pink Cadillac! She can’t wait for the upcoming GM EVs for her next ride. When not writing about Mode, she’s reading books on politics or watching Turner Classic Movies with her three dachshunds.