ACLU of Maine Executive Director, Alison Beyea, was invited to the First Amendment Musuem in Augusta to discuss voting rights and the ACLU's long history and ongoing commitment to protect the right to vote.
You can read a transcript of Alison's speech or watch the event below.
Transcript
Thank you to the First Amendment Museum for inviting me tonight to speak about voting rights. The right to vote is at the core of our democracy, and I applaud the Museum for its mission and programming to promote democracy by educating people about the guarantees of the First Amendment. The First Amendment Museum is housed in the family home of Guy P. Gannett, whose company owned a number of news organizations in Maine, including the Press Herald. Mr. Gannett valued the press as a public good, and his legacy continues with the Museum. A free and independent press is an important aspect of ensuring what we are here to talk about today: voting rights.
Voting is about the right to self-determination, and before I proceed, I want to acknowledge that the state of Maine continues to deny the right to self-determination to the Wabanaki Tribes, the original inhabitants of this land. I encourage everyone attending this event to learn about the Wabanaki Tribes – the Penobscot Nation, the Passamaquoddy Tribes, the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians and the Aroostook band of MicMacs — and their ongoing efforts to regain their sovereignty after the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act. A place to start is the Wabanaki Alliance’s website.
Thank you all for being here tonight to learn about one of our most precious and most contested rights — the right to vote.
Nothing captures our nation — its contradictions, its hypocrisies, its failures and its triumphs — like the right to vote. That’s because the right to vote is revolutionary, and it’s where power resides.
As the late Congressman John Lewis said, “The right to vote is precious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful nonviolent tool or instrument in a democratic society.”
The right to vote is revolutionary, and it’s where power resides.
Excluding groups from voting means excluding them from power — maintaining white supremacy and patriarchy. Inclusion means the opposite — when everyone can meaningfully vote without barriers and in representative districts — we have the power to remake the nation into one that is more representative of our great diversity, into a nation that is more just and where power is shared equitably.
Tonight, in my remarks, I want to trace the development of voting rights in the Constitution and our federal law, and how at the core of voting rights are questions — and contests — over citizenship, belonging and power. Our history and present day show us the right to vote is never won or settled. It is an ongoing struggle, and there is no more important struggle right now. After my remarks, Museum Director Christian Cotz will join me in conversation, and we will talk about the present state of voting rights, how the ACLU is engaged in this struggle, and how we are defending voting rights in Maine and nationally. Then we will open it up to questions from you.
Let’s start where we often do: the Constitution — where we look to find our rights. You may be surprised, but you won’t find a right to vote in the 1787 Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
Instead Article One, Section Four of the United States Constitution defers to states to determine the time, manner and place of elections for members of Congress. And as we all know, the President isn’t elected by popular vote, but by the Electoral College. The Constitution’s Framers did not believe that all people should have a say in their government, even though they wrote a government gains its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. The Framers feared the tyranny of the majority over the minority — in this case, the minority were wealthy, property-owning white men.
Determinations about who got to vote remained with the states, and most states had some economic restrictions on which white men could vote. During the first half of the 19th century, as the United States displaced and massacred Native American tribes west of the Appalachian Mountains, the so-called “frontier states” were settled by a growing number of white men without property. These new states loosened and eliminated economic restrictions on white men’s voting rights, as did the original 13 colonies.
At the same time that states liberalized voting for white men, they began restricting or tightening voting rights for Black men. For example, in New York, all white men could vote, but Black men had to have property worth at least 250 dollars. As mid-Atlantic states like Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania eased economic restrictions on voting for white men, they amended their constitutions to exclude Black men from voting.
This is how things stood before the Civil War: state laws consolidated the special power of voting in the hands of white men, while excluding everyone else, and the federal government had almost non-existent power over local election laws and voting.
The real transformation in voting rights and the contest over expanding the idea of citizenship and belonging in the United States came in the post-Civil War period. In putting the nation back together, the Reconstruction Congress understood that the federal government had the responsibility and the power to protect the rights of formerly enslaved people from the tyranny of the states.
"The 'Reconstruction amendments' transformed the Constitution and American society by sweeping into full citizenship America’s newly freed slaves."
I want to underline what a radical departure this is from the original Constitution and Bill of Rights, where the focus had been on limiting federal power and preserving states' sovereignty, and especially the property rights of slave owners. This is why some scholars, such as Berkeley Law Professor john a. powell, talk about two Constitutions – the 1787 Constitution and the post-Reconstruction Constitution, as amended by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
As powell writes, “These three amendments, known as the 'Reconstruction amendments,' transformed the Constitution and American society by sweeping into full citizenship America’s newly freed slaves, endowing them with new rights, privileges, and freedoms. In a very real sense, these amendments changed the core meaning of 'We the People.'”
As powell notes, we went from the Dred Scott decision in 1857, finding Black people are not and can never be U.S. citizens, to the Fourteenth Amendment — conferring citizenship onto formerly enslaved people and giving Congress the power to enforce and protect these citizenship rights from abuses by the states.
The Fifteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1870, recognized the right to vote for the first time in our founding document. It prohibits governments from denying or abridging the right to vote on the basis of race, color or previous condition of servitude. On paper, it enshrined Black men’s right to vote. Fifty years later came the Nineteenth Amendment which, after generations of work by women’s suffrage activists, enshrined women’s right to vote — recognizing them as citizens alongside men.
These amendments, the public discourse about them, and expanded understandings about citizenship paved the way for an expansion in voting rights. Each of these amendments — and the legislation it authorized Congress to pass — is a triumph. Groups that were previously denied political and civil rights asserted their power and memorialized that power in a document that they were never meant to be beneficiaries of.
But I don’t want to give the impression that expanded voting rights and political participation has been a straightforward path or somehow inevitable. It took generations of movement building and persistence by marginalized communities to win their voting rights. And within these movements, there were setbacks, internal rifts and uneven gains.
For example, in the women’s suffrage movement. These were visionary, brave women. They advocated, picketed, went on hunger strike, and were arrested and beaten for the right to vote. They challenged oppressive, patriarchal notions of gender ideology. They asserted that they had a right to participate and exist in the public sphere at a time when that was a radical thought.
Nevertheless, the racial politics of women’s suffrage were problematic. White women’s suffrage advocates were allies of abolition, but a rift emerged over the Fifteenth Amendment. Even though Frederick Douglass supported women’s voting rights, some iconic white women’s suffrage leaders did not support Black men’s suffrage, engaging in racist rhetoric about who was more deserving and capable.
Black women were active participants and leaders in the women’s suffrage movement, but their role has been diminished. Black women were often segregated, and their concerns at the intersection of race and gender given little attention by white, mostly middle- and upper-class suffragists.
By themselves, the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments could not overcome centuries of white supremacy entrenched in our laws and customs. And the federal government and federal courts retreated from their duty to protect these new citizens.
Black men and women, especially in the Jim Crown South, were effectively denied the right to vote, despite these constitutional amendments, because of racially discriminatory state laws and racial violence.
By themselves, the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments could not overcome centuries of white supremacy entrenched in our laws and customs.
Native Americans were also kept from voting despite the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments. Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924 recognizing Native Americans as United States citizens, and on paper, according them with the political and civil rights of citizens. But because voting is largely determined by states, most states continued to deny Native Americans full citizenship rights, including voting rights. In fact, Maine was notorious in this respect. Maine didn’t confer the right to vote to Native Americans until 1954 — it took a ballot referendum voted on by non-Native people to authorize the right to vote to Native Americans in Maine.
And finally, many ethnic communities couldn’t vote despite the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendment. The United States’ immigration laws did not offer Asian immigrants the possibility of becoming naturalized citizens until 1952. And language barriers – the fact that voting materials were in English – meant that U.S. citizens with limited English proficiency, many who are members of ethnic communities, couldn’t vote until the 1972 expansion of the Voting Rights Act which protected so-called “language minorities.”
I want to pause here in my abridged sketch of 150 years in the evolution of voting rights to underline an important idea: the fight for voting rights has taken generations, and it has taken a movement — it is ordinary people, it is organizers, it is lawyers, it is faith leaders, it is elected officials, it is allies in solidarity finding their lane and working together to mold the law into what they need it to be. There have been disagreements. There have been setbacks. There have been betrayals. But the movement persisted. And it still persists.
And so, it took a century — a century of organizing, movement building and persistence by Black communities and their allies to pave the way for one of the greatest achievements of American democracy, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Voting Rights Act was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson, and for decades, it has had bipartisan support in Congress and from the sitting president when it has come up for reauthorization. From Nixon and Reagan to Clinton and Bush. It was not a partisan issue. In fact, President George W. Bush signed the most recent 25 year-long extension of the Voting Rights Act in 2006.
It took a century of organizing, movement building and persistence by Black communities and their allies to pave the way for one of the greatest achievements of American democracy, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
With its expansion over the years to protect even more voters from discrimination, the Voting Rights Act has meaningfully extended and protected voting rights for Black voters, voters of color — including Native American voters, voters with limited English proficiency, and voters with disabilities.
But this flourishing came to a screeching halt with one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in recent history – Shelby County v. Holder. In it, the Supreme Court gutted one of the most important provisions of the Voting Rights Act, ending the Justice Department’s ability to block discriminatory changes to election law in states and counties with a history of voter discrimination. The Shelby County decision has empowered states to pass all manner of voter suppression tactics: closing polling places, voter ID laws, voter roll purges, onerous voter registration procedures.
This is where we find ourselves now: decades of flourishing in voting and participation after the passage of the Voting Rights Act has been followed by a swift backlash. How long will this backlash last? What will its long-term effects be? How can we resist the backlash, and sustain our movement? The story of voting rights is unfinished and the end is not guaranteed. We are writing that story now.
When I think about our present moment, I can’t help but think about the period of Reconstruction. I look to it for parallels and instruction, I look to it as a warning for what will happen if we capitulate, if we “negotiate with white supremacy,” as the legal scholar Kimberle´ Crenshaw has said.
This is where we find ourselves now: decades of flourishing in voting and participation after the passage of the Voting Rights Act has been followed by a swift backlash.
Reconstruction was a high point in American democracy, a period of flourishing for Black civil and political rights. As historian Eric Foner puts it, Reconstruction was “a stunning and unprecedented experiment in interracial democracy.”
Protected by federal power between 1866 and 1877, Black communities in the South actively participated in creating new state constitutions and voting their community members into office. Reconstruction saw the first Black representatives elected to local governments, state legislatures and to Congress. According to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, more than 1,500 Black men held local and state offices. From tax collectors to mayors, from state legislators to school superintendents. And the crowning achievement was the election of the first Black members of Congress from the South: 14 Congressmen and two Senators.
Reconstruction illustrates what makes voting so powerful, and why restricting the franchise is a core tool of white supremacy. When Black communities had federal protection and a legal regime that permitted them to organize and vote in safety, they were able to have a collective voice in this nation: how they were governed, who represented them and what they wanted their future to look like.
But the visionary experiment of interracial democracy ended with a capitulation to white supremacy. As the historian Eric Foner puts it, Reconstruction ended in abandonment, when “a politically tenacious black community, abandoned by the nation, fell victim to violence and fraud.”
In 1877, our nation accepted a compromise that unleashed a reign of terror on Black Americans in the South. Southern Democrats, alleging voter fraud and challenging the result of the 1876 election, agreed to withdraw their election challenge, but only if northern politicians would remove federal troops from the South and end Reconstruction. As my colleague, the Executive Director of the ACLU of Georgia says, “The North won the war, but the South won the peace.”
Our country had just fought a brutal war to end slavery, but we weren’t ready to confront white supremacy. The end of Reconstruction made way for local coups — where white supremacist mobs unseated multiracial, elected governments. For more than one hundred years, Black Americans had to endure the daily white supremacist violence of Jim Crow laws, lynchings and the suppression of Black political power.
The question now remains: Will we become a multiracial, multiethnic nation that inches nearer to our founding principles of equality and liberty? Or will we remain a nation of white dominance and white supremacy?
We live with the legacy of this abandonment. For too long we’ve been willing to accept or ignore white supremacy, rather than acknowledge it as a violent ideology. We have done this at our own peril. In the context of our nation’s history, our nation’s compromises and our nation’s unwillingness to confront white supremacy, what happened on January 6th was not a surprise. But it was disgraceful. A mob that included white supremacists — goaded by the former president and his enablers who unabashedly stoke white nationalism and white resentment — stormed the Capitol to overturn the outcome of a legitimate election. These were not isolated incidents, but direct rebukes to the tremendous efforts by Black organizers and voters — everyday heroes — to participate in the 2020 election, despite staggering obstacles.
The question during Reconstruction, and the question now remains: Will we become a multiracial, multiethnic nation that inches nearer to our founding principles of equality and liberty? Or will we remain a nation of white dominance and white supremacy, that subjugates and excludes Black people, Indigenous people and people of color. Who gets to vote is a central struggle in our country’s messy becoming.
The right to vote means you belong to the community we call the United States. The right to vote means your voice matters — you’re able to elect the representatives that share your concerns and experiences. The right to vote means you have power over your destiny and the destiny of our country. That is what is at stake when we talk about voting rights.