No ICE at the Polls!

Voting is the democratic part of Democracy! It is the work we do to choose the representatives in our representative Republic! Dill Buckley called it: Our Civic Sacrament."

Attitudes and rules for voting evolved from the Time of our Great Declaration to the present. Our nation was not born fully grown and having an adult understanding. Like all infants, it had to grow into adulthood slowly and often, erratically.

At the start, most of the founders believed that only white adult male property owners would have the right to cast a ballot, though by the end of the revolution, people came to realize that the war itself was won by mostly young males who owned little to no property.

After the Declaration, each colony wrote a constitution. All but Pennsylvania included property ownership as a requirement for the right to vote. Franklin was asked why he did not include that requirement in the document. He explained that if a man owns a jackass, he can vote, but if the jackass dies, he loses that right. So, who has the right, the man or the jackass?

The issue was not resolved in the Articles of Confederation or even in the Constitution that followed. It was left to the states to make such election-related determinations. In 1856, North Caroline became the last of the existing states to drop property ownership as a voting requirement.

The right of all citizens to vote was not recognized until the 1960's!