San Joaquin Votes: Exercise Your Rights!
A Local Guide to Elections
Who Can Vote?
Today, there are three conditions for who can vote:
- Any United States citizen who is eighteen years or older on Election Day.
- Not in a state or federal prison or who is not currently on parole for a felony conviction.
- Not currently found mentally incompetent to vote by a court.
The writers of the United States Constitution left it to the states to decide who was eligible to vote. From the early years of our country, state governments decided white male adult property owners could only vote. By 1860, most states had removed the requirement of property ownership for white males. The earliest state to allow women to vote was New Jersey in 1776. As early as the mid-1800s, territories and states allowed women to vote. It was not until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 that women gained the right to vote in all states.
Women in California gained the right to vote in a special election in October 1911. One of the first votes held in San Joaquin County that women could take part in was on whether or not Stockton could have an electrical grid. Women voted for the proposal at over 90%.
Stockton Daily Evening Record, November 3, 1911.
In 1868, African-Americans became U.S. citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment, but were still not allowed to vote. Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, which gave voting rights to all men no matter their race, color, or if they had been slaves. Many Southern states still made it difficult for African-Americans to vote. Revisions to state constitutions and laws created voting restrictions that included literacy tests, poll taxes, moral character tests, and property ownership requirements. It was not until 1964 that Congress passed the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, making the use of a poll tax illegal. The Voter Rights Act of 1965 prohibited states from denying the right to vote based on literacy tests or the color of skin.
The legal voting age was twenty-one until 1971. Students protesting against the Vietnam War wanted the voting age lowered to eighteen. They believed that if they were old enough to be drafted into a war they opposed, then they should be old enough to vote and have a voice in their government. Congress proposed the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to change the voting age to eighteen on March 23, 1971. It was ratified on July 1, 1971, making it the quickest ratification of a constitutional amendment in United States history.