{"id":19621,"date":"2015-03-10T22:21:19","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T05:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=19621"},"modified":"2015-03-11T13:00:46","modified_gmt":"2015-03-11T20:00:46","slug":"the-right-to-vote-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=19621","title":{"rendered":"The Right To Vote Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jeff-parker-voting-rights-cartoon\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s disgusting Shelby <\/em>decision, Representatives Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) have proposed a new Congressional <\/del>Constitutional Amendment, which has been endorsed by the Democratic National Committee. The text <\/a>of their proposed amendment:<\/p>\n

Section 1. Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.<\/p>\n

Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although many Americans don’t realize this (although I think most “Alas” readers do), the Constitution does not explicitly protect<\/a> a right to vote.<\/p>\n

There’s no chance of the Right to Vote Amendment (RIVA?) passing Congress (let alone two thirds of Congress) anytime soon, because virtually all elected Republicans oppose it.<\/p>\n

In Slate, Jamelle Bouie argues that Democrats should fight for a constitutional right-to-vote amendment.<\/a><\/p>\n

…the Constitution allows voter suppression as long as it doesn\u2019t trip any of its race or gender wires.<\/p>\n

The goal of a right-to-vote amendment is to change the dynamic and place the burden on restrictionists. In a sense, it would make the pre\u2013Holder v. Shelby Voting Rights Act a standard for the entire country. States and localities would have to make voting as accessible as possible, with a high standard for new barriers.<\/p>\n

And while the odds of winning a right-to-vote amendment are low\u2014one reason Democrats should invest more effort in state elections\u2014there\u2019s tremendous value in mobilizing around the issue. A movement for a right-to-vote amendment could encourage laws and norms that expand participation irrespective of an amendment in that direction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Scott Lemieux argues<\/a> that such a Constitutional Amendment wouldn’t do much good:<\/p>\n

The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment… thought that bad judges were a much bigger problem than textual lacunae, and there’s a great deal of truth in this. It’s very likely that the Roberts Court would uphold most contemporary vote-suppression laws even if a right-to-vote amendment was passed.<\/p>\n

Moreover, in all likelihood these vote-suppression techniques already violate the existing text of the Constitution. A federal district judge, for example, found that Texas’ draconian voter ID law was racially discriminatory in both effect and purpose, and also functions as a poll tax. If these findings are accurate, the Texas law already violates the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Twenty-Fourth Amendments.<\/p>\n

None of this is to deny that changes in textual language could matter at the margin. I can imagine certain judges, particularly moderate Democratic nominees, who would uphold voter ID requirements under the current constitution, but not under an amended one. However, the track record of textual protections for the right to vote is generally poor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Derek Muller, a law professor at Pepperdine, raises some interesting issues<\/a>, including:<\/p>\n

1. Can felons and ex-felons convicted of election-related crimes be prohibited from voting?<\/em> The proposed amendment would probably extend the right to vote to all felons imprisoned (currently disenfranchised in 48 states) and all those paroled, on probation, or ex-felons (currently disenfranchised to varying degrees in many states), extending the right to vote to five or six million new voters. […]<\/p>\n

2. Could the state prevent the mentally handicapped from voting? <\/em>Most states have some kind of rule preventing the mentally handicapped from voting. Once voting is deemed a “fundamental right,” will these laws, as they presently exist, stand? What kind of rewriting or retailoring would be necessary?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A couple of thoughts:<\/p>\n

1) How infuriating is it that one of the two major parties will not support a Constitutional Right to Vote?<\/p>\n

2) Even though the Amendment can’t pass in the immediate future – and that’s a shame, I’d love to see felon disenfranchisement ended – it is still worth fighting for, as a mobilization tool to help build support for state-level voting-rights laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s disgusting Shelby decision, Representatives Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) have proposed a new Congressional Constitutional Amendment, which has been endorsed by the Democratic National Committee. The text of their proposed amendment: … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19621"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19644,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19621\/revisions\/19644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}