ByTodd D. Rainer

28 April 2020

“One person, one vote,” is a beautiful fable we tell ourselves in the United States. But as a historical and factual policy, it is no closer to the truth than “the United States doesn’t deal with terrorists,” or “America is the greatest country in the world.” Yes, I know that this prologue sounds cribbed from the debate scene of the first episode of “The Newsroom,” but come on, let’s be honest, anyone who has a smidgen of untarnished knowledge about this nation’s history heard Will McAvoy’s tempestuous rant and nodded their heads in agreement.[i]  As a historian, I hear the phrase, “one person, one vote,” and like McAvoy I’m not even sure what you’re talking about.

In 1789 the U.S. Constitution granted the power to set voting requirements to the states.[ii]  This hodgepodge of voting laws eliminated suffrage for slaves, women, most Jews and Catholics, those under 21 years old, and non-freeholder men. In British Colonial America and the early United States, the percentage of men qualified to vote could have been as low as 10% but it was certainly no higher than 20%![iii] “One person, one vote,” indeed.

But we must ignore the vast universe of voting requirements established by the various colonies of Colonial British America and jump straight to post-revolutionary United States. Even in the newly established land of the free, one still could not claim that “one person, one vote” had any meaning whatsoever. After all, in post-revolutionary United States, the 3/5th clause in the Constitution, declaring slaves not quite a whole person, utterly annihilates any argument that there was “one person, one vote.” [iv] These 3/5ths of a person become important in the functioning of the Electoral College, a topic which we will discuss shortly.

After the Civil War, former slaves did not have their right to vote recognized until the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870. One has to ask, in a nation that believed in “one person, one vote,” why the need for a Constitutional revision to let free people vote? The 15th Amendment, coupled with Reconstruction policies improved the lot of African Americans, driving the nation towards this ideal. For a while, the situation for the new citizens looked promising. Between 1870-1887 seventeen African Americans served in the U.S House of Representatives and two in the U.S. Senate.[v] The system was imperfect. Despite overcoming many obstacles, the 15th Amendment guaranteed the right of blacks to vote, it did not guarantee the behavior of southern whites. In the many places outside the control of the U.S. Army, it was simply unsafe, even deadly for blacks to even attempt to vote. 

In 1877, Reconstruction ended without resolution. Over the next two decades, southern whites ousted black officials at nearly all levels of government. African American voting rights were abrogated by Jim Crow Laws that prevented blacks from serving on juries, imposed poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests, and a host of other means to keep the negro in his “proper place.” The Ku Klux Klan used violence including, arson, bombing, lynching, and murder to repress southern blacks.[vi] American political scientists have long recognized the effects of the failure of the federal government to protect voting rights of southern blacks well into the 20th Century. Even after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, citizens reported their rights violated. In 1949, V.O. Key, Jr noted the how long-running racist policy coupled with tacitly approved and para-official violence against blacks suppressed their voting behavior.

“Among the great democracies of the world, the Southern states remain the chief considerable area in which an extremely small proportion of citizens vote.”[vii] 

Key’s comment is supported by research. In 1938, Ralph Bunche determined that nationally southern Black turnout was 4 percent.[viii] By 1980, despite serious Republican challenges to southern Democrats in the 1940’s and 1950’s, Black turnout was only 8 percent in the southern states.[ix] “One person, one vote?” Not if you’re a Black person in the American South.

There are challenges to research and understanding as well. Sarah McKee, M.V. Hood, III, and David Hill in their study, Achieving Validation: Barack Obama and Black Turnout in 2008, maintain that no national data concerning black voter turnout is available as the American National Election Studies (ANES) stopped validating presidential turnout after 1988. If true, this is incredibly short-sighted.[x] Without national data, their study focused on the turnout of black voters in Georgia. Their findings indicates that between the 1996 – 2008 presidential elections, black turnout in Georgia grew from 54% to 76%, an increase of 22%![xi] The authors admit that their data is incomplete, and again, that no national data was available to them, only that of the five states which track voters based on race. Additionally, they concluded that the presence of the first African American majority party nominee requires that scholars seek ways to validate this increase in black voter participation which effectively closed the race gap in Georgia![xii] Tasha S. Philpot, Daron R., and Shaw Ernest B. Mcgowen of the University of Texas shower the reader with data, showing that black voter turnout in 2008 was 65.2 percent nearly matching white voter turnout percentages. This however is something we should beware of. While the authors report the voting rates of white and black voters and the number of black voters who turned out, they never once mention the number of white voters who actually voted. Percentages can be deceptive. That’s not to disparage the gains here, the apparent growth of percentage of voter participation in among Georgian blacks is amazing. This is just a criticism of the researchers who love to give us glorious data without giving us all the data.[xiii] We do have national data on the racial makeup of the electorate; the number of whites who voted in 2008 was 99.95 million, the number of blacks, 15.51 million, or about 12.1% of the total electorate.[xiv] That is starkly different from the percentages given in this report. The Pew report notes that the 2008 presidential campaign was the most diverse in history. Minorities in all categories closed the gap to some extent, and certain individual groups, black women, Latinx workers, young people, etc. greatly increased their voting participation. However, even these advances, in the face of both official and unofficial pushback, can hardly be said to represent “one person, one vote.”[xv]

Today, the restrictions on voting for convicted felons in a system designed to and rewarded for creating them, coupled with the abuses related to mass incarceration, the “war on crime,” and the “war on drugs,” continue this grand American tradition of saying everyone has the right to vote, while taking that right away from the very people that had their rights abrogated in the first place given that  mass incarceration is effectively the modern replacement for slavery and Jim Crow. Yes, direct links to slavery, Jim Crow, and white supremacy exist within the criminal justice system. These links are, unfortunately beyond the scope of this article, the author will attempt at a later date to clarify this accusation – but for the interested reader, the information is publicly available. For people of color, incarceration is not theory, it is a fact of life with large swaths of young black and Latinx men, women, and children swept up into a system designed to do just that. According to the NAACP, African Americans and Hispanics make up 56% of all incarcerated people in 2015.[xvi] The progress in correcting these wrongs has been and continues to be a long-hard slog. Attempts at reform run afoul of federal and state governments that are hostile not just towards people of color, but also women, and other vulnerable groups. Only two states, Maine and Vermont, leave felon voting rights intact.[xvii] Sixteen states return the right upon release from incarceration and twenty-one restore them after completion of parole or probation.[xviii] In eleven states, felons lose their right to vote permanently in some fashion, and can regain those rights only under specific circumstances.[xix] Fortunately, work in this area is advancing. In 2019 alone, five states either passed or refined laws related to the restoration of voting rights to ex-convicts.[xx] It is a rare instance in which the move towards “one person, one vote,” can be observed.

While I have focused on issues of race, this essay cannot do justice to the issue of the “one person, one vote” myth as an article of political hypocrisy. Its reach has and does extend to women, other peoples of color, minorities, the aged, the infirm, the poor, or even those who simply tend to not follow the majority in the district in which they live. All can and do suffer from the inequity of voter suppression in the name of whatever dog whistle the local party bosses see fit to blow. States today are expanding restrictive voting laws under the guise of preventing illegal voting – an activity that even the most conservative of researchers argue does not exist in anywhere near the proportion that proponents insist. Even in the face of evidence to the contrary, fourteen states enacted voter I.D. laws that in the final analysis were not designed to prevent any sort of voter fraud, but to prevent voting, period.[xxi]

The Texas law cannot be shown to be effective in preventing any voter fraud that has ever been committed in the state. It even allows for the use of identification that can be obtained by non-state citizens, negating its said legal purpose! The only success it can show is in suppressing the vote for up to 600,000 Texans![xxii] If these laws are designed to prevent voter fraud, then they are failures, and a solution looking for a problem. However, if the aim is to ensure the wrong sorts of people don’t vote, then they are wildly successful. For this reason, these laws, collectively, have been called the largest rollback of voting rights since the Jim Crow Era. They are the opposite of the “one person, one vote” maxim, dressed in legalistic misinformation.

Nor does this essay address the issues brought blazingly forth by the fiasco that was the 2016 election of Donald Trump by the electoral college over the will of the people. The electoral college, once again falling in opposition to the popular vote, showed that, at least in presidential elections, “one person, one vote” means little, if nothing.  Historically, presidential elections have never been a “one person, one vote” affair. To start with, the mishmash of laws varying state-to-state that surround the electoral college at least give the impression that the electoral college is designed to keep the right sort of person in power. In some states, a single vote awards all the electorates to one candidate – that doesn’t jibe with “one person, one vote.” In the early 19th Century, the states selected their electors directly. Early support for an electoral college takes us right back to slavery. Those 3/5ths of a person counted towards the number of delegates in the electoral college, and thus, the number of votes a state had towards the executive. Additionally, fourteen of our early Presidents, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were either slave owners, involved in the slave trade, or supported slavery.[xxiii]

Ultimately, since the founding of the nation in 1776 and the ratification of the Constitution in 1889, and all the changes up to today, anywhere the “powers that be” seek to restrict some less desirable class from voting – the concept of “one person, one vote” is simply set aside in favor of one vote for the right person. “One person, one vote,” simply doesn’t exist and it never has except as something to put on the advertisements.

In her dissent to the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, Justice Ruther Bader Ginsburg said,

 “As the record for the 2006 reauthorization makes abundantly clear, second-generation barriers to minority voting rights have emerged … as attempted substitutes for the first-generation barriers that originally triggered preclearance in those jurisdictions.” [xxiv]

Our first step, in light of the United States’ history of repression, should be, as always, identify, study, understand, then weed out and reject bigotry. If we did, and we truly embraced the maxim, “All men are created equal,” the vast majority of the challenges discussed here would simply fade into memory.

Bibliography:

“The 26th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution”. National Constitution Center – The 26th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Retrieved June 3, 2019. 04/25/2020. https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xxvi.

“Why America is NOT the Greatest Country in the World Anymore,” The Newsroom: We Just Decided To. June 24, 2012. Directed By: Greg Mottola. 04/24/2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqcLUqYqrs.

15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Voting Rights (1870), Our Documents. 04/25/2020. https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=44.

19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women’s Right to Vote (1920), Our Documents. 04/25/2020. https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=63.

2008 Time Series Study, American National Election Studies. 04/27/2020. https://electionstudies.org/data-center/2008-time-series-study/.

Amar, Akhil Reed, The Constitution Today: Timeless Lessons for the Issues of Our Era. 2016. Hatchette Book Group, New York, NY.

BRIA 8 1 b Who Voted in Early America? Constitutional Rights Foundation. 04/27/2020. https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-8-1-b-who-voted-in-early-america.

Cobb, Michael D., and Jeffery A. Jenkins. “Race and the Representation of Blacks’ Interests during Reconstruction.” Political Research Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2001): 181-204. Accessed April 28, 2020. doi:10.2307/449214.

Criminal Justice Fact Sheet: Racial Disparities in Incarceration, NAACP. 04/27/2020. https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/.

Dissecting thee 2008 Electorate: Most Diverse in U.S. History. April 30, 2009. Pew Research Center; Hispanic Trends. 04/27/2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2009/04/30/dissecting-the-2008-electorate-most-diverse-in-us-history/.

Hayden, Grant M. “The False Promise of One Person, One Vote.” Michigan Law Review 102, no. 2 (2003): 213-67. April 27, 2020. doi:10.2307/3595382.

Hesseltine, William B., Southern Politics in State and Nation. By V. O. Key, Jr. With the Assistance of Alexander Heard. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1949. Pp. xxvi, 675, xiv. Trade $6.00, text $4.50.), The American Historical Review, Volume 55, Issue 4, July 1950, Pages 939–941, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/55.4.939.

Kousser, J. Morgan. “Voting.” In The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 10: Law and Politics, edited by Ely James W. and Bond Bradley G., by Wilson Charles Reagan, 301-05. University of North Carolina Press, 2008.  April 27, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469616742_ely.98.

Marshall, Stephen Houston. “Telling It Just Like It Is: The Tragicomedy of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.” Signs 39, no. 3 (2014): 709-33. Accessed April 28, 2020. doi:10.1086/674455.

McKee, Seth C., M. V. Hood, and David Hill. “Achieving Validation: Barack Obama and Black Turnout in 2008.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly 12, no. 1 (2012): 3-22. Accessed April 28, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/41575840.

People Search, Black Americans in Congress; 41st – 49th Congress. History, Art & Archives: United States House of Representatives. 04/27/2020. https://history.house.gov/People/Search?Term=Search&SearchIn=LastName&ShowNonMember=true&ShowNonMember=false&Office=&Leadership=&State=&Party=&ContinentalCongress=false&BlackAmericansInCongress=true&BlackAmericansInCongress=false&WomenInCongress=false&HispanicAmericansInCongress=false&AsianPacificAmericansInCongress=false&CongressNumberList=41-42-43-44-45-46-47-48-49&CurrentPage=1&SortOrder=LastName&ResultType=Grid&PreviousSearch=Search%2CLastName%2C%2C%2C%2C%2CFalse%2CFalse%2CFalse%2C%2CLastName

Philpot, Tasha S., Daron R. Shaw, and Ernest B. McGowen. “Winning the Race: Black Voter Turnout in the 2008 Presidential Election.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 73, no. 5 (2009): 995-1022. April 28, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/40467655.

Platt, Matthew B. “An Examination of Black Representation and the Legacy of the Voting Rights Act.” Phylon (1960-) 52, no. 2 (2015): 87-107. Accessed April 28, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/43681955.

Re, Richard M., and Christopher M. Re. “Voting and Vice: Criminal Disenfranchisement and the Reconstruction Amendments.” The Yale Law Journal 121, no. 7 (2012): 1584-670. Accessed April 28, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/41510456.

Restoration of Voting Rights, National Conference of State Legislatures. 04/27/2020. https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx.

Schuit, Sophie, and Jon C. Rogowski. “Race, Representation, and the Voting Rights Act.” American Journal of Political Science 61, no. 3 (2017): 513-26. Accessed April 28, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/26379507.

Shelby County v. Holder, 570 YS 529 (2013). 04/27/2020. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96.

The Fifteenth Amendment in Flesh and Blood: The Symbolic Generation of Black Americans in Congress, 1870–1887. History, Art & Archives: United States House of Representatives. 04/27/2020. https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Fifteenth-Amendment/Introduction/.

Voting Laws by the Numbers. Brennan Center for Justice. 03/27/2020. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/election-2016-restrictive-voting-laws-numbers.

ENDNOTES:

[i] Why America is NOT the Greatest Country in the World Anymore, The Newsroom: We Just Decided To.  June 24, 2012. Directed By: Greg Mottola. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqcLUqYqrs. Accessed: 04/24/2020.

[ii] More accurately, did not reserve it for the federal government.

[iii] BRIA 8 1 b Who Voted in Early America? Constitutional Rights Foundation. Accessed: 04/27/2020. https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-8-1-b-who-voted-in-early-america.

[iv] Article 1, Sect.2 U.S. Constitution.

[v] The Fifteenth Amendment in Flesh and Blood: The Symbolic Generation of Black Americans in Congress, 1870–1887. History, Art & Archives: United States House of Representatives. Accessed: 04/27/2020. https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Fifteenth-Amendment/Introduction/. 

People Search, Black Americans in Congress; 41st – 49th Congress. History, Art & Archives: United States House of Representatives. Accessed: 04/27/2020. https://history.house.gov/People/Search?Term=Search&SearchIn=LastName&ShowNonMember=true&ShowNonMember=false&Office=&Leadership=&State=&Party=&ContinentalCongress=false&BlackAmericansInCongress=true&BlackAmericansInCongress=false&WomenInCongress=false&HispanicAmericansInCongress=false&AsianPacificAmericansInCongress=false&CongressNumberList=41-42-43-44-45-46-47-48-49&CurrentPage=1&SortOrder=LastName&ResultType=Grid&PreviousSearch=Search%2CLastName%2C%2C%2C%2C%2CFalse%2CFalse%2CFalse%2C%2CLastName.

[vi] 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Voting Rights (1870), Our Documents. URL: https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=44. Accessed: 04/25/2020.

[vii] William B. Hesseltine, Southern Politics in State and Nation. By V. O. Key, Jr. With the Assistance of Alex William B. Hesseltine, Southern Politics in State and Nation. By V. O. Key, Jr. With the Assistance of Alexander Heard. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1949. Pp. xxvi, 675, xiv. Trade $6.00, text $4.50.), The American Historical Review, Volume 55, Issue 4, July 1950, Pages 939–941, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/55.4.939.

[viii] Kousser, J. Morgan. “Voting.” In The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 10: Law and Politics, edited by Ely James W. and Bond Bradley G., by Wilson Charles Reagan, 301-05. 303. University of North Carolina Press, 2008.  April 27, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469616742_ely.98.

[ix] Ibid. 302.

[x] Unfortunately, both time and space prevent much of an exploration of this issue using ANES data. But a basic search of their codebook at least indicates that race is reported: 2008 Time Series Study, American National Election Studies. 04/27/2020. https://electionstudies.org/data-center/2008-time-series-study/.  Is it possible that ANES has reinstituted an abandoned policy?

[xi] McKee, Seth C., M. V. Hood, and David Hill. “Achieving Validation: Barack Obama and Black Turnout in 2008.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly 12, no. 1 (2012): 3-22. 9-10. Accessed April 28, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/41575840.

[xii] McKee, Et. Al. 16.

[xiii] Philpot, Tasha S., Daron R. Shaw, and Ernest B. McGowen. “Winning the Race: Black Voter Turnout in the 2008 Presidential Election.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 73, no. 5 (2009): 995-1022. Accessed April 28, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/40467655. Additionally, the desire to use “scholarly language” must be suppressed if we expect people to understand our work.

[xiv] Dissecting thee 2008 Electorate: Most Diverse in U.S. History. April 30, 2009. Pew Research Center; Hispanic Trends. 04/27/2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2009/04/30/dissecting-the-2008-electorate-most-diverse-in-us-history/.

[xv] Ibid.

[xvi] Racial Disparities in Incarceration, NAACP. 04/27/2020. https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/.

[xvii] Restoration of Voting Rights, National Conference of State Legislatures. 04/27/2020. https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx.

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid.

[xxi] Voting Laws by the Numbers. Brennan Center for Justice. 03/27/2020. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/election-2016-restrictive-voting-laws-numbers. Those states are, Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

[xxii] Though that number varies widely and could be as low as 30,000 depending on who you want to believe. My question is this, when it comes to stripping away the rights of voters unnecessarily, what is the right number?

[xxiii] Amar, Akhil Reed, The Constitution Today: Timeless Lessons for the Issues of Our Era. 2016. Hatchette Book Group, New York, NY. 148, 386, etc.

[xxiv] Shelby County v. Holder, 570 YS 529 (2013). 04/27/2020. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96.