The long and intricate journey of voting rights in the United States.
By Dr. Michael Kryzanek | April 2, 2026
The late John Lewis, great civil rights advocate and U.S. congressman from Georgia said, “the vote is precious. It is almost sacred. It is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have in a democracy.” Voting is indeed precious and a powerful tool protecting our democracy, but ensuring that voting becomes the bedrock of our democratic way of life has not been easy, in fact it has faced many challenges and obstacles as those who feared the power of the vote and the voice of the people have tried to make it difficult to cast a ballot.
The right to vote in the newly independent colonies did not get off to a favorable start as the Founding Fathers restricted participation in electoral politics to wealthy men with property. Franklin, Jefferson and Adams, who were largely responsible for writing the Declaration of Independence, relied upon thinking of British political philosophers like John Locke who accented the importance of civil society and a social contract that unified the people and French thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau who talked about the value of the “general will.” This is where “We The People” comes from. There was little talk among the Founders about the rights of women, Native Americans and slaves, even though Adams’ wife Abigail reminded her husband to “remember the ladies” with Adams responding “…We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems.” As to the voting rights of slaves, it is important to stress that 41 of the 56 signers of the Declaration owned slaves. While Franklin and Jefferson eventually rejected slavery, there was no attempt to extend voting rights to slaves. As to Native Americans, there was no mention of their rights under this new document of independence.
It would take the disastrous Civil War to begin expanding voting rights in the United States. At the cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, President Abraham Lincoln reemphasized the words of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but after his assassination the 13th Amendment was ratified (in 1865) ending slavery and involuntary servitude. Later in 1870, the 15th Amendment was passed stating that “citizens of the United States shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state the right to vote on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Sadly, however, the struggle to guarantee the right to vote for former slaves continued as Southern states during the Jim Crow era employed various strategies to suppress the vote from mandating deliberately difficult civics tests that ensured failure, to exorbitant fees to vote to outright intimidation. While in northern states, voting by former slaves was accepted and numerous candidates for political office did benefit from newly enfranchised voters.
Image: Ye May session of ye woman’s rights convention – ye orator of ye day denouncing ye lords of creation / JM’N. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.