| The U.S. Constitution does not guarantee you the right to vote. |
| The United States stands virtually alone on denying constitutional protection of the right to vote. 108 of the 119 democratic nations in the world have a right to vote in their Constitution -- including the Afghan Constitution and the interim Iraqi Constitution. The United States is one of only 11 that do not. [O]ur voting system is built on the foundation of "states" rights -- 50 states, 3067 counties and more than 12,000 different election jurisdictions, all separate and all unequal. These election jurisdictions can each individually set voting policies and procedures such as ballot design, voter eligibility, which voting equipment is used, polling hours, how to count provisional ballots and what ID requirements are needed. As a result, more than a million votes in the 2004 election were discarded. In one instance, 4,500 votes were lost forever when a touchscreen voting machine malfunctioned in North Carolina and had no back-up. In Florida and Pennsylvania, two of the most important battleground states in the presidential contest, more than half of the provisional ballots cast were not counted. Election officials claim most of those were from unregistered voters. The question remains why weren't they registered? Did the local officials make mistakes when preparing voter rolls, a partisan organization simply not mail in their registration forms, or were these voters simply not registered? Source: "Securing the right to vote: Voting as right of citizenship should be 28th Amendment" by Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. - FairVote - 3/16/05 |
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