With the 2012 presidential election now behind us, this is the right moment to review this nation’s voting process and the review is not a good one. The Preamble of the Constitution famously starts with the words “We the People,” and promises “a more perfect Union. ” If we want our “ Union” to become even “more perfect,” we must strengthen our national standards on the voting process, set a floor below which no state may fall, and clarify what voting rights no citizen may be denied.
Long before the words “Tea Party” symbolized a nascent political movement, the “Boston Tea Party” signified organized resistance to a political system where the people governed had no voice in the political process. As a result, at both home and abroad, our nation’s legitimacy rests primarily on the notion that those who govern have been fairly chosen by those who will be governed. Nearly 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court summed up the importance of the right to vote this way: “The right to vote freely for the candidate of one’s choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government. And the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen’s vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.”
