The Republican Party has throughout most of its history been far more concerned than the Democratic Party with protecting voter rights.
Republicans secured the enactment in 1870 of the 15th Amendment, with the declaration that “The right of U.S. citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
Republicans controlled the U.S. House and Senate when the 19th Amendment giving the right to vote to women was submitted to the states in 1919.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 would not have passed without the overwhelming support of Senate Republicans. It was a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who wrote Congress in 1970 expressing his strong support for a constitutional amendment extending the right to vote to 18-, 19-, and 20-yearolds.
The history of the Republican Party when it comes to voting rights has been a proud one. But it has been diminished in recent years as the party’s governors and legislators have moved in states across the country to enact anti-democratic voter ID laws that are nothing more than crude voter-suppression schemes.
Republican governors, including Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, who have signed these noxious measures have dishonored the once-proud name “Republican” and a once-great party’s finest tradition of working across the decades to extend voting rights to all Americans.
Michael Degenhart
State College
