Comparing the 'right to vote' with the 'right to keep and bear arms' is a red herring. They are simply not comparable. The RKBA is a right enshrined in our constitution, but there is no 'right to vote'. Sure, what you've posted indicates who CAN vote, but it is not a right such as is the RKBA, and any comparison of the two is just a distraction.Cedar Park Dad wrote:IIRC but felons can't vote in Texas.fickman wrote: I talked to her about Constitutional rights vs. privileges; I talked to her about how we let everybody vote even though they do great harm when they are uninformed, but we cannot give a literacy test. . ..
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So there are limits to everything, and everything should be discussed.
I cannot take credit for the writing below - instead I'll defer to Neal Boortz for the explanation. Note that some of Boortz's comments are not always within the guidelines of this forum, so in addition to posting a link to his full article here, I'm including the relevant text below (emphasis below is mine, however):
Let's make our first stop at Wikipedia. We'll make two stops. First, the entry for "Voting rights in the United States." There you will find the following sentence:
There is no "right to vote" explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution, but only that they cannot be denied based solely on the aforementioned qualifications, however, the "right to vote" may be denied for any other reason (i.e. being convicted of a felony).
Next stop .. .the Wikipedia entry for "Sufferage." A subsection of this entry covers the history of suffrage (the vote) in the United States. Here you go:
In the United States, suffrage is determined by the separate states, not federally. There is no national "right to vote". The states and the people have changed the U.S. Constitution five times to disallow states from limiting suffrage, thereby expanding it.
Moving right along now, here's an article written by Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. entitled "The Right to Vote." Jackson writes: "And yet the right to vote is not a fundamental right in our Constitution." I guess that you folks who have been sending in those emails are right, and the Congressman is wrong ... right? Jackson has introduced a voting rights amendment in the congress. Now just why would he need to do that if the right already existed?
- 15th Amendment (1870): no law may restrict any race from voting
- 19th Amendment (1920): no law may restrict any sex from voting
- 23rd Amendment (1961): residents of the District of Columbiacan vote for the President and Vice-President
- 24th Amendment (1964): neither Congress nor the states may condition the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other type of tax
- 26th Amendment (1971): no law may restrict those 18 years of age or older from voting because of their age
I'm not through with you yet. Let's go to Michael C. Dorf. Dorf is the Vice Dean and professor of law at Columbia University. Dorf wrote this article entitled "We Need A Constitutional Right to Vote in Presidential Elections." Tell me, would a law professor write a column calling for a constitutional right to vote if we already had one?
Final stop ... the complete text of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of George W. Bush, et al., Petitioners v. Albert Gore, Jr., et al. Take a look at Section II, Paragraph B. The very first sentence there reads: "The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College. U.S. Const., Art.II, 1."
