A New Voting Rights Act for the 21st Century

By Michael Bargo, Jr.

In 1963, Evron M. Kirkpatrick, a member of the President's Commission on Registration and Voter Participation, brilliantly summarized the importance of voting to a democracy:

A democratic system rests ultimately on the belief that each man is the best judge of his own interests and that he should have, through the ballot box, a voice in choosing those who govern him. Voting is the fundamental political right of citizens in a democracy. The right to vote is the right to influence officials and policy. To be denied the vote is to be denied the guarantee that one's interest will be taken into account when policy is made. There is no justifiable test of property, race, color, national origin, religion, or education for disenfranchising one class of citizens.

While most persons are aware of the methods of polling place cheating, which have involved duplicate voting, vote fraud, and so on, what is not as well known are the more subtle methods of denying voters their right "to influence officials and policy."........ Read more