If approved by the Congress and then ratified by three-fourths of the states, it would add to the founding document this declaration: SECTION 1: Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides. SECTION 2: Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation. ...Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made a point of emphasizing during the Bush v. Gore arguments in December 2000 that there is no federal constitutional guarantee of a right to vote for president. Scalia was right. Indeed, as the reform group FairVote reminds us, “Because there is no right to vote in the U.S. Constitution, individual states set their own electoral policies and procedures. This leads to confusing and sometimes contradictory policies regarding ballot design, polling hours, voting equipment, voter registration requirements, and ex-felon voting rights. As a result, our electoral system is divided into 50 states, more than 3,000 counties and approximately 13,000 voting districts, all separate and unequal.” Mark Pocan and Keith Ellison want to do something about that. The two congressmen, both former state legislators with long histories of engagement with voting-rights issues, on Monday unveiled a proposal to explicitly guarantee the right to vote in the Constitution. ...“The right to vote is the foundation of any democracy,” says FairVote executive director Rob Richie. “Adding an affirmative right to vote to the US Constitution is the best way to guarantee that the government, whether at the federal, state, or local level, cannot infringe upon our individual right to vote. Building support for this amendment offers an opportunity to inspire a twenty-first-century suffrage movement where Americans come together to protect voting rights, promote voter participation and debate suffrage expansion.” https://facebook/photo.php?fbid=458989520857468&set=a.426519947437759.1073741826.100002392729185&type=1&relevant_count=1 Congressmen Seek Constitutional Guarantee of the Right to Vote May 13, 2013 by John Nichols Full article: thenation/blog/174303/congressmen-seek-constitutional-guarantee-right-vote
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 13:34:18 +0000
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