On this day in 1870, the United States took a momentous step forward in the long struggle for universal suffrage, ratifying the 15th Amendment to the Constitution and declaring that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
Yet as powerful and important a statement as that was, no one could argue with a straight face that racial minorities gained the right to vote on that day, 142 years ago. In the wake of the 15th Amendment, a multitude of roadblocks were erected to maintain the wall of separation between racial minorities and the ballot box – from poll taxes, to literacy tests, to grandfather clauses and beyond.
What seemed on its face to be a resolute guarantee of equality was anything but that in reality – an all-too-familiar chasm between theory and practice that would spark many of the key conflicts during the Civil Rights Movement, particularly in the early-to-mid 1960s. Eventually Congress would take another important step towards equality and pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which helped beef up the 15th Amendment after it had been so clearly brushed aside for nearly a full century.
We’ve come a long way since 1965, and certainly since 1870, but the struggle for voting rights wages on with a renewed vengeance. Just over a month ago, the Justice Department blocked South Carolina’s new voter ID law because it would have disproportionately affected thousands of minority voters – an authority vested in them by the Voting Rights Act to ensure that states did not violate the 15th Amendment as they had been doing.
Unfortunately, South Carolina is merely one example of the nationwide attack on voting we witnessed in 2011. If you visit our site with any regularity, you know this issue has been getting a lot of our focus lately, and that’s unlikely to change in the months to come. We are by no means the only ACLU affiliate dealing with attacks on the right to vote, though so far we have been one of the most successful. In addition to our resounding victory in November that restored same-day voter registration, we received some excellent news late today when lawmakers in Augusta killed a proposal to require voter ID here in Maine. But the attacks on voting rights are not likely to go away. Even in killing this dangerous bill, lawmakers ordered a study that will waste both time and resources and provide a new opportunity for further politicization of the administration of elections.
The language of the 15th Amendment is clear and concise, yet 142 years after it was codified into our legal system, its fundamental promise – that the color of your skin should have no impact on your ability to vote – remains too often unfulfilled. While we have made tremendous progress since then, undoubtedly aided by the 15th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act, we should not take our eye off the ball. Voter ID laws and other such measures to restrict access to the ballot box have a significantly disproportionate effect on minorities and are perpetuating inequities in our democratic system. Until they are rooted out and eliminated in their entirety, the struggle will wage on.
