COMMENTARY: Voting is Americans’ constitutional right

Voting is assumed to be a right that every American citizen will inherently have from the moment they become 18. To consolidate voting as a right, even more, the Constitution itself, specifically the Fifteenth Amendment, defines voting as something that “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Yet, in recent years the question arose: does it really count as a right or is it just a privilege?

The act of voting is by its very definition a right, it is a tool to be used by people to express their personal stance. Furthermore, to vote refers to the ability to declare, endorse and choose one’s opinion in regard to a certain situation.

Be it the decision of who will be recognized as the new head of a student organization inside of campus or to decide on a new policy or regulation that will be applied to a county, state, or nation, voting is what allows individuals to have their opinion on a matter considered.

All evidence points toward the fact that voting is a right by every interpretation of its definition, so where does the idea that it’s not one appear? This disagreement with classifying it as a right begins with the fact that the Fifteenth Amendment, which defines what voting is, does not assure that it applies to every person.

This means that each state can apply any regulation that it desires without issue. Voting can be denied to people that qualify under certain criteria, such as being a felon or not an American citizen.

It is from here that the debate sprouts. One might argue that a right should not be something that can be denied. The very idea of denying a right goes against the basic understanding of what rights entail.

Then, if voting is by its definition and practices a right, but it can be regulated to the point of being denied, the question arises whether it is truly a right or merely a privilege?

One of the most common qualifications used to regulate voting is citizenship. One thing to note is that while voting is indeed an American right, it is not necessarily a global right.

Take, for example, the government structure of countries like China and North Korea where the citizens themselves are incapable of actively participating in any of the decisions that the government decides on. There is no electoral process in the country so there is no right to vote.

Another example on a lesser scale is how someone is not able to vote to elect the next president of the Student Government Association of UHCL if they are a student at another university.

While voting in a university setting is quite different from the governmental process, the principle is the same, to have a voice in the direction of an organization or sovereign body there first needs to be a direct connection with said body.

Some would then bring forth the fact that non-citizens can still be legal residents and that if they reside in the nation, they should be able to participate in the governmental procedure. Yet, the thing is that a legal residency without citizenship is that it is, in essence, a temporary status.

A resident is a person who can live and reside in the United States for a fixed amount of time making them not a part of the American government, but more accurately a guest of it.

Another point used to regulate accessibility to voting is a person’s criminal and legal status. A person that is currently registered as having had committed a felony has their ability to exercise their right to vote suspended. This course of action is commonly referred to as felony disenfranchisement.

While this could provide a solid argument as to voting being a privilege, in the end it cannot be applied as such because of the current nature of disenfranchisement. It is not a revocation of the ability to vote but a temporary suspension, the length of which depends on the sentence and the state.

Since 2008, the United States has lessened the severity of felony disenfranchisement, to the point that most states allow for voting right after parole is finished. Even in the strictest of states, the ability to apply the right to vote can be easily regained by filling the out rights forms and following the correct legal process during or after finishing the sentence.

Thus, felony disenfranchisement is not a type of exclusion of a marginalized population, but rather a form of punishment that will be absolved with due process.

In the end, after dissecting voting’s nature and what it entails, it indeed needs to be considered a right of the people. It may have some restrictions, but these restrictions are not established as a source of marginalization for specific minorities. Instead, said restrictions are just a way to maintain the nature of voting, a right that expresses the sovereignty of an organization or nation and its members.