Voting Is (And Always Has Been) An Integral Part of The United States

So Go Vote

Photo by Cyrus Crossan on Unsplash

The act of voting has been an integral part of the United States, stretching back hundreds of years. Voting was one of the major causes of the American Revolution. At first, many colonists simply wanted to be represented in the British political system. British citizens in Europe were able to vote for their representatives, while British citizens in the Americas had no such representation. Most Americans can still reflexively mouth the words No Taxation Without Representation.

Voting was a critical part of the events surrounding the US civil war. Southern states voted to leave the Union before the outbreak of the war. The vote to leave the Union was influenced by radicals sitting in elected positions. Influential citizens in these states had elected firebrands to their state and federal congressional seats. These radicals were known as fire-eaters, and they made a lot of noise about secession on behalf of their electorate even though, today, we know that these sentiments were in the minority. If people had voted in more moderate people in the 1850s, perhaps war could have been avoided.

Voting was also instrumental in the years after the civil war. The fight over who could vote and who could not was a critical battle in the latter half of the 19th century. It…