This year is an important year because in a month we will be voting for our elected officials including a presidential election. The right to vote is something we may take for granted in today’s society. Voting rights in the United States have a long and complicated history. People did not always have that sacred right to choose our government representatives.
In the late 1780s, the US Constitution provided that the STATES set voting requirements. For example, only a few states allowed free black men to vote. New Jersey allowed unmarried or widowed women to vote but only if they owned property.
In 1790 the Naturalization Act allowed free white immigrants to become citizens but this did not automatically allow them to vote.
By 1800 only Kentucky, New Hampshire and Vermont had universal voting privileges for all white males. By 1828, all states allowed all white males to vote. In 1856, North Carolina was the last state to abolish the voting requirement of property ownership.
Over our history, voting rights were given or taken away from various classes of people based on color or religion or ethnicity. Women were not guaranteed the right to vote until the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. Our native American Indians were not granted citizenship and therefore not eligible to vote until 1924, although our own state of Arizona did not grant FULL rights until 1948.
We have come a long way since our beginnings as a country with lots of twists and turns in granting voting privileges to our citizens. Many countries in the world still have very strict requirements for electing their government; and some still have dictatorships. We can be thankful we live in a free country, and we have the ability to choose our local, county, state and federal representatives.
Voting registers/rolls/records are available for us in our desire to research our family history. It’s yet another record we should search for to place our ancestors in a place and time. It’s part of our life story for all. Cyndi’s List is a good resource for locating voting records as is the Family Search WIKI.
Please be sure to exercise your right to vote in this election on November 5th. That way, not only do we have a “say” in our governing bodies, but as our descendants are researching us years from now, there is another piece of evidence to tell the story about our life.
God Bless America!
