What is the history of suffrage in the United States?
• Voting rights were initially left to the states and were restricted to white males who owned property or paid taxes. • By the beginning of the Civil War, voting rights had been extended to all white males. • The Fifteenth Amendment provided that the states could not deny the right to vote on the basis of race. • States, however, implemented poll taxes, literacy tests, and white primaries as a way to reduce minority voting. • The Nineteenth Amendment (1920) provided that the states could not deny the right to vote on the basis of gender. • The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were legislative attempts to overcome barriers that limited minority voting rights. • Government stresses civic education as a way to create support for participation in the political process. • Despite these efforts, only about 50 percent of eligible voters participate in presidential elections compared to 70 to 90 percent in European countries.
