Title
Dept/ Agency: Offices of Municipal Council/City Clerk
Action: ( ) Ratifying (X) Authorizing ( ) Amending
Type of Service: Urging/Supporting
Purpose: Supporting a right-to-vote amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Additional Information:
body
WHEREAS in a democracy, the right to vote is a moral imperative, the most fundamental legal right and is protective of all other rights; and
WHEREAS when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act he said, "The right to vote is the basic right, without which all others are meaningless"; and
WHEREAS the right to vote is a fundamental right and should be explicitly guaranteed to all Americans in the U.S. Constitution; and
WHEREAS "nowhere in the United States Constitution is there an explicit declaration of the right to vote. Initially the Constitution appears to have left that right up to the states." (Oxford Companion to the U.S. Supreme Court); and
WHEREAS prior to becoming President of the United States, Professor Barack Obama, as a teacher of constitutional law at the University of Chicago, began each of his constitutional law classes sharing with his students the surprising fact that an explicit "federal individual right to vote" is not in the U.S. Constitution; and
WHEREAS the Constitution has been amended 17 times since the Bill of Rights and 7 of those amendments pertain to voting - 14, 15, 17, 19, 23, 24 and 26 - but none of them add the explicit, fundamental, affirmative, individual, citizenship or federal right to vote to the Constitution; and
WHEREAS three amendments outlaw discrimination in voting on the basis of race (15th) - the 1965 Voting Rights Act was the enabling or implementing legislation for this amendment 95 years later - sex (19th) and age (26th); and
WHEREAS a right to vote constitutional amendment would fulfill the 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments; and
WHEREAS of the 119 nations that elect th...
Click here for full text