How negroes are excluded from voting.
By various devices the Southern states have for the most part excluded negroes from suffrage. One of these is the requirement that all voters shall be able to read and write. If this provision were impartially applied to the white and the colored population alike; if all illiterate persons irrespective of color were excluded, this action would be entirely justified. But the aim of the South is to eliminate the negro as a voter whether he is illiterate or not.[[34]] The attitude of the white population in the South is not difficult to understand. In the days immediately following the Civil War the colored men were given the ballot in all the Southern states, and the results were disastrous. Unfit men were elected to office, public money was spent wastefully, and government was badly conducted in all these states under the domination of the colored voters. As a result the white population took the control once more into its own hands and has kept it there. But this can scarcely be regarded as a final solution of the problem. No political problem can be solved in this country in defiance of the constitution. Many Southerners realize this and are endeavoring to find some solution which will be for the best interests of the negro while protecting the white man’s political supremacy. The negro question is particularly the Southerner’s problem; he knows the colored race as no Northerner can; and if he cannot settle it justly and wisely, no man can.
The extension of the suffrage to women.
The Nineteenth Amendment.—It is now more than fifty years since women first began to claim, in this country, the right to equal political privileges with men. Those who supported this claim argued that women were quite competent to assume an active share in government and that in some branches of public administration (such as the management of schools and the enforcement of the laws regulating child labor) women have an even greater interest than men. Women were required to pay taxes and it was urged that on this account they were entitled to representation. On the other hand the extension of the suffrage to women was opposed on the ground that it would tend to weaken the interest of women in the home, thus impairing the strength of the family as a social unit, and also that women would not use the ballot wisely. They would be influenced by their sympathies and emotions rather than by their judgment, it was predicted, and would bring an element of instability into public policy. Another objection commonly raised was that with twice as many voters the cost of holding elections would be doubled. But despite these objections the movement for woman suffrage made gradual headway in one state after another and finally, in 1920, it was made compulsory upon the entire country by the provisions of the Nineteenth Amendment.[[35]]
Citizenship, age, and residence.
Present Qualifications for Voting.—Each state decides who shall not vote. Each state has entire freedom to do as it thinks best in this matter subject only to the provisions of the national constitution, which stipulate that the privilege of voting shall not be denied to any citizen by reason of sex, or because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. There is no reason, therefore, why the qualifications for voting should be the same in all parts of the country, and as a matter of fact they differ a little from state to state. At present the restrictions relate mainly to age, citizenship, and residence, but sometimes also to literacy and taxpaying. In every state the privilege of voting is restricted to persons who are twenty-one years of age or over. As for the residence requirement it varies considerably in different states, running usually from six months to a year. It is imposed in order to make sure that those who vote in any community shall be somewhat acquainted with its affairs. In most of the states none but citizens are permitted to vote, but in two or three states the privilege is extended to those aliens who have declared their intention of becoming citizens.
Educational Tests for Voters.—Educational qualifications for voting, in one form or another, exist in nearly one-third of the states.[[36]] In some the requirement is that anyone who desires to be enrolled as a voter shall be able to write his name and also to read aloud any clause taken at random from the state constitution. Exemptions from this test are always granted to persons who by mere reason of physical disability are unable to read or write.
Several of the Southern states have provided additional exemptions which result in excusing from the test all white persons who are unable to read and write while strictly applying the requirement to all colored applicants. |How educational tests are applied.| Various methods are employed to this end. In one case the provision is that no one may be registered as a voter unless he can read any clause in the state constitution or “give a reasonable interpretation thereof”. The white officials in charge of the registration then decide, in their own discretion, whether the interpretation is reasonable or not. In some other states the attempt has been made by what is commonly known as the “grandfather clause” to excuse from the literacy test all persons who had the right to vote before 1867, and all descendants of such persons. As there were no colored voters in any of the Southern states prior to this date the “grandfather clause” virtually establishes a racial discrimination which the Supreme Court, a few years ago, declared to be unconstitutional.
Is an Educational Test Desirable?—In the majority of the states men and women are permitted to vote even though unable to read or write. The question is often asked whether this practice is wise. Would it be better to insist on an elementary educational qualification everywhere, or is it desirable that in a democracy no distinction be made between those who can read and those who cannot?
The arguments for and against educational tests.