Why America Votes PDF

# Why America Votes When our democracy began it was a revolutionary idea. And over the course of our history, more and more Americans have fought to participate at the ballot box. In 1788, when Americans voted for the first time in a presidential election, only five years had elapsed since the Uni...

# Why America Votes When our democracy began it was a revolutionary idea. And over the course of our history, more and more Americans have fought to participate at the ballot box. In 1788, when Americans voted for the first time in a presidential election, only five years had elapsed since the United States had freed itself from the British monarchy in the Revolutionary War (1775-1783). The Constitution had been ratified just months before the vote, and the young nation was charting a new course for democracy. The election of George Washington as the first American president proved that a nation could choose its own leader, rather than submitting to the will of a king. That was a revolutionary idea. At the time, there were no other functioning democracies in the world, historians say. The rest of American history has been both a celebration of and a challenge to the idea that our votes are sacred. Our democratic experiment hasn't always gone smoothly. Huge groups of people were excluded from voting for much of our history. In fact, for the first few decades of our nation's existence, the only people who could vote were White men who owned property. *And that was a small sliver of the country's population.* ## Expanding the Vote But over the years, more and more Americans fought for and won the right to participate in the critical task of electing our representatives. Starting in the 1790s, most states removed the requirement that men own property in order to vote. By the time of the 1828 presidential election, most White men were allowed to go to the ballot box. This huge expansion of the electorate helped elect Andrew Jackson to the White House. Jackson was a popular military hero and the first U.S. president not to come from a wealthy, privileged background. After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, established that Black men had the right to vote. In 1920, the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote. Four years later, the Indian Citizenship Act gave Native Americans full citizenship and thus the right to vote. But it wasn't until the mid 1960s that the U.S. really achieved universal suffrage. Even though Black Americans technically had had the right before then, discriminatory laws and practices across much of the South effectively prevented most African Americans from going to the polls. In 1965, after a long struggle for civil rights led by Black Americans, the federal Voting Rights Act finally removed those barriers. ## A Functioning Democracy While the history of American democracy is far from flawless, our system of voting is extremely functional. All candidates who meet legal requirements are allowed on the ballot. And Americans who meet age, citizenship, and residency criteria can vote for the candidates of their choosing in the privacy of a voting booth. That's still not the case in some countries. In Russia, Venezuela, and Iran, for example, the government holds elections and people go to the polls, but voters' ability to shape the outcome is extremely limited. Citizens risk punishment if they openly criticize their leaders, and real opposition candidates are not allowed to even appear on the ballot. ## Having a Say in Government America's democracy is sometimes messy, but the people ultimately decide the nation's fate. "We should understand that making a democracy work is really hard," says Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. "Generations of Americans have fought and bled for the right of subsequent generations to have a say in their government." The most fundamental way we can help make our democracy work is by taking part in it, however we can. And young people, who become eligible to vote in a presidential election as soon as they turn 18, play an important role. "It's hard to feel like your vote matters, but election results often depend on the turnout of young voters," says presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky. "Young people have a much bigger role than they think they do. They should feel empowered by that." ## The World's Oldest Democracies The dates below indicate when democracy began: | Country | Year | Years | |---|---|---| | United States | 1789* | 235 | | Switzerland | 1848 | 176 | | New Zealand | 1857 | 167 | | Canada | 1867 | 157 | | United Kingdom | 1885** | 139 | *Most historians date the beginning of U.S. democracy to 1789, the year the Constitution took effect, even though Americans cast their first votes for president in 1788. **1885 marked the first time a majority of men in the U.K. were eligible to vote. *Source: World Economic Forum* ## Words to Know * **Monarchy**: A nation ruled or led by a monarch, often a king or queen. * **Ratified**: Approved or sanctioned formally. * **Electorate**: All the people in a country who are entitled to vote. * **Abolition**: The act of officially ending or stopping something. * **Universal Suffrage**: A situation in which all adult citizens have the right to vote.