Thinking about Elections

NOT REGISTERED TO VOTE. Voter registration wasn’t common until well into the 19th century. Before that, local officials simply knew the small number of white male landowners qualified to vote. Voting was a public show: the voter ascended to a platform and shouted out their vote (no secret ballot.) The poll book was where an election clerk recorded the voter’s name and vote. 

Early use of voter registration was mainly to enforce the requirement that qualified voters pay their taxes. By the 1850s the land ownership requirement had largely disappeared because of deliberate political calculations. If landless immigrants flooding into urban areas could vote, it would benefit certain political interests. 

The increase in urban populations triggered a wave of state voter registration laws. Voter registration was promoted as a way to combat fraud, but it was also a convenient way to keep people from voting. (Sound familiar?) Voter registration was required only in the cities, and the registrar, who went door to door, could (conveniently) skip immigrants, blacks, and others deemed undesirable by corrupt political parties. By the turn of the 20th century voter registration had become a battleground across the country as competing political factions manipulated voter registration laws to favor votes for their side.

Challenges to voting rights are not a 21st-century invention. Different groups have long tried to keep the less powerful from voting. Expanding the franchise has always been a struggle and defending it, a necessity.

In 1776 John Adams felt expanding voting rights was dangerous and wrote, “New Claims will arise. Women will demand a Vote. Lads from 12 to 21 will think their Rights not enough attended to, and every Man, who has not a Farthing, will demand an equal Voice with any other in all Acts of State.” 

https://www.history.com/news/voter-registration-elections-president-midterms