The Right to Vote

by Alexander Keyssar

  35 “Show Your Papers,” New York Herald, 17 October 1888; Debates Pennsylvania 1872-73, vol. 1, 89-93, 133, 529, 693-711; McSeveney, Politics of Depression, 67; Conkling, City Government, 196; William E. Chandler, “Methods of Restricting Immigration,” Forum 13 (March 1892): 141-142.

  36 Kineen v. Wells, 11 NE 916, 922 (Mass. 1887); Massachusetts, Statutes (1885), chap. 345; McCrary, Treatise, 64-65; William Steele, ed., Revised Record of the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York, 4May 8, 1894-September 19, 1894, vol. 4 (Albany, NY, 1900), 460-478.

  37 See Frederick Van Dyne, A Treatise on the Law of Naturalization of the United States (Washington, DC, 1907), 12-13, 40-61, 409-440.

  38 M. K. Reely, Selected Articles on Immigration (New York, 1917), 62-64; McCullough, Suffrage and Its Problems, 149, 151; John B. Moore, “Needed Reform in Naturalization,” Forum 13 (June 1892): 476; John P. Gavit, Americans by Choice (Montclair, NJ, 1971), 93, 98, 107-108, 124-126; Chandler, “Methods,” 133; H. Sidney Everett, “Immigration and Naturalization,” Atlantic Monthly 75 (March 1895): 348, 351; Don D. Lescohier, “Working Conditions,” in Don D. Lescohier and Elizabeth Brandeis, eds., The History of Labor in the United States, vol. 3 (New York, 1935), 17-23. For examples of judges refusing to naturalize men because of their political beliefs, see The Miners’ Magazine 8 (4 October 1906): 7; ibid., 10 (13 May 1909): 4; ibid., 10 (8 July 1909): 8; ibid., 12 (23 May 1912): 10; ibid., 12 (26 September 1912): 8.

  39 Prescott F. Hall, Immigration and Its Effects Upon the United States (New York, 1907), 262-280; George M. Stephenson, A History of American Immigration, 1820-1924 (New York, 1926), 156-169; Smith, Emigration and Immigration, 161-167; Lescohier, “Working Conditions,” 23-29; Grose, Aliens, 95-96; Proceedings of the New York Convention of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, 1914 (New York, 1914), 92-93; A. T. Lane, “American Trade Unions, Mass Immigration, and the Literacy Test: 1900-1917,” Labor History 25 (Winter 1984): 18-24; John J. Bukowczyk, “The Transformation of Working-Class Ethnicity: Corporate Control, Americanization, and the Polish Immigrant Middle-Class in Bayonne, New Jersey, 1915-1925,” Labor History 25 (Winter 1984): 75; Gerd Korman, Industrialization, Immigrants, and Americanizers: The View from Milwaukee, 1866-1921 (Madison, WI, 1967), 148-155; House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Proposed Changes in Naturalization Laws,” Part 6: Hearings, 66th Cong., 1st sess., October 1919, 5-27; John W. Briggs, An Italian Passage: Immigrants to Three American Cities, 1890-1930 (New Haven, CT, 1978), 134; Gavit, Americans by Choice, 255-268; State Committee on Citizenship and Naturalization, State of Illinois, Citizenship and Naturalization Activities in the United States (Springfield, IL, 1937), passim.

  40 Carl B. Swisher, Motivation and Political Technique in the California Constitutional Convention, 1878-79 (Claremont, CA, 1930), 11-16, 88-92; Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley, CA, 1971), 113-138; Fifteenth Census of the U.S. 1930, Population , vol. 2 (Washington, DC, 1933), 402; Chandler, “Methods,” 135; Lescohier, “Working Conditions,” 18, 32; Congressional Record, House, 44th Cong., 2d sess., vol. 5, pt. 1 (28 February 1877), 2004-2005; there is evidence that some courts did naturalize a small number of Chinese immigrants.

  41 Saxton, Indispensable Enemy, 115-134; Gwendolyn Mink, Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party, and State, 1875-1920 (Ithaca, NY, 1986), 85-86.

  42 Paul Mason, ed., Constitution of the State of California, Annotated, vol. 1 (San Francisco, 1953), 263-266; Debates California 1878, vol. 3, 1018-1019, 1522; Swisher, Motivation, 88-92. Bans on Chinese voting were in the Oregon Constitution of 1857 and the Idaho Constitution of 1889.

  43 Herbert J. Bass, “The Politics of Ballot Reform in New York State, 1888-1890,” New York History 42 ( July 1961): 254-262; Charles C. Binney, “The Merits and Defects of the Pennsylvania Ballot Law of 1891,” in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 2 ( July 1891-June 1892): 751-771; John F. Reynolds, Testing Democracy: Electoral Behavior and Progressive Reform in New Jersey, 1880-1920 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1988), 59; Richard H. Dana, The Australian Ballot System of Massachusetts, The City Club of New York (1891), 3-4; and idem, “The Australian System of Voting,” in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 2 (May 1892): 733-750; Joseph B. Bishop, “The Secret Ballot in 33 States,” Forum 12 (1891-1892): 587-598; L. E. Fredman, “The Introduction of the Australian Ballot in the United States,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 13 (August 1967): 204-220; Eldon C. Evans, A History of the Australian Ballot System in the United States (Chicago, 1917), 1-31, 40-44; Knights of Labor, Proceedings of the Fifteenth Regular Session of the General Assembly (Toledo, OH, 10 November 1891), 6; Coast Seamen’s Journal 2 (16 January 1889): 1-2; and ibid., 3 (12 February 1890): 1; Debates California 1878, vol. 1, 1368; Argersinger, “A Place on the Ballot,” 290-292, 291n; Baum, Civil War Party System, 15.

  44 Bass, “Politics of Ballot Reform,” 254-260; Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics, 52; Phillip Allen, “Ballot Laws and Their Workings,” Political Science Quarterly 21 (March 1906): 39; Baum, Civil War Party System, 16-20; “Successful Ballot Laws,” Nation 49 (17 October 1889): 304; A. C. Bernheim, “The Ballot in New York,” Political Science Quarterly 4 (1889): 151-152; Debates California 1878, 1368; Debates Pennsylvania 1872-73, vol. 1, 133, 146, 506-507; and ibid., vol. 2, 50-95; Merritt Starr and Russell H. Curtis, eds., Annotated Statutes of Illinois in Force January 1, 1896, vol. 2 (Chicago, 1896), chap. 46, sec. 188; Wickam v. Coyner, 20 Ohio C.D. 765, 1900 WL 3118, (Ohio Cir 1900).

  45 Godkin, “Democratic View,” 119; Revised Record of the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York: April Fifth to September Tenth, 1915, vol. 3 (Albany, NY, 1916), 2931-2943, 2999-3004; Joseph H. Brewer, Charles H. Bender, and Charles H. McCurren, eds., Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Michigan Convened in the City of Lansing, Tuesday, October 22, 1907, vol. 2 (Lansing, MI, 1907), 1235.

  46 Debates Missouri 1875, vol. 4, 158-167; Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York, 1867-1868, vol. 5 (Albany, NY, 1868), 3564; Revised Record New York 1915, vol. 3, 3015-3028; Debates Michigan 1907, vol. 2, 1236; New York Times, 25 August 1915.

  47 Arthur W. Bromage, “Literacy and the Electorate: Expansion and Contraction of the Franchise,” American Political Science Review 24 (November 1930): 955-956; Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Illinois, 1920, vol. 1 (n.p., 1922), 996-999; Debates Missouri 1875, vol. 4, 168; Debates Michigan, 1907, vol. 2, 1234-1236; Revised Record New York, 1915, vol. 3, 2999-3055, 3151-3168.

  48 Debates Delaware 1896, vol. 2, 1046-1050; Bromage, “Literacy,” 956-959; George H. Haynes, “Educational Qualifications for the Suffrage in the United States,” Political Science Quarterly 13 (September 1898): 496-498; New York Times, 25 August 1915; Massachusetts, Gen. Laws, chap. 404, sec. 20 (1889); Journal and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Wyoming, 1889 (Cheyenne, WY, 1893), 388-393.

  49 Roger Daniels and Eric F. Petersen, “California’s Grandfather Clause: The ‘Literacy in English’ Amendment of 1894,” Southern California Quarterly 50 (March 1968): 52-54.

  50 Bromage, “Literacy,” 955-959; New York Times, 17 October and 23 October 1921; ibid., 7 November, 9 November, 10 November, 11 November, 12 November, and 21 November 1921; ibid., 2 December and 16 December 1921; Revised Record, New York, 1915, vol. 3, 3002; Journal of the Constitutional Convention of New York, Convened Wednesday, 4 December 1872 (Albany, NY, 1873), 270-271, 283.

  51 Louis Windmuller, “The Qualification of Voters,” Harper’s Weekly 44 (13 October 1900): 975; Bromage, “Literacy,” 948-949, 960-962; Commons, Races and Immigrants, 194-195; Finla G. Crawford, “Operation of the Literacy Test for Voters in New York,” American Political Science Review 25 (May 1931): 342-345. For examples of court decisions, see Ferayorni v. Walter, 202 N.Y.S. 91 (N.Y. Sup. 1923); Stone v. Smith, 34 NE 52
1 (Mass. 1893); and Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347 (1915).

  52 Johnson quoted in Arguments of Charles T. Russell, Jr., Counsel for the Respondents and Arthur T. Johnson and Gen. Edgar R. Champlin, Counsel for the Petitioners Before the Committee on Elections on the Part of the House (Boston, 1891), 21. Stephan Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians (Cambridge, MA, 1973), 16-20, 39-42, 220-230; for statistics indicating even higher rates of mobility in San Francisco (and their impact on voting), see McDonald, Parameters, 119-120.

  53 Sharp v. McIntire, 46 P. 115, 116 (Colo. 1896). See also Kellogg v. Hickman, 21 P. 325 (Colo. 1889); Jain v. Bossen, 62 P. 194 (Colo. 1900); People v. Turpin, 112 P. 539 (Colo. 1910); Sturgeon v. Korte, 34 Ohio St. 525 (Ohio 1878); Esker v. McCoy, 5 Ohio Dec. Reprint 573 (Ohio Com. Pl. 1878); McCrary, Treatise, 35-44.

  54 Pope v. Williams, 193 U.S. 621, 633 (1904).

  55 Debates Illinois 1869, vol. 2, 1272-1274, 1282; Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, eds., Biographical and Memorial Edition of the Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois, vol. 1 (Chicago, 1915), 368, 394.

  56 Debates California 1878, 1016-1019, 1362-1363; Debates Pennsylvania 1872-73, vol. 1, 534-535; see also ibid., 89, 539-540, 628-629; Journal of New York, 1872-73, 22, 31-32, 95-96, 281, 291-292.

  57 Debates Pennsylvania 1872-73, vol. 1, 152-165; Debates Ohio 1873, vol. 2, 1860-1861, 1938-1946; Dale v. Irwin, 78 Ill. 170 (Ill. 1875); Welsh v. Shumway, 83 N.E. 549 (Ill. 1907); Wickham v. Coyner, 20 Ohio C.D. 765 (Ohio Cir 1900); Parsons v. People 70 P. 689 (Colo. 1902); McCrary, Treatise, 41-44; In re Good-man , 40 N.E. 769 (N.Y. 1895); Matter of Barry, 58 N.E. 12 (N.Y. 1900).

  58 Not surprisingly, perhaps, courts interpreted laws dealing with the voting rights of soldiers with considerable latitude. In 1917, for example, a New York court ruled that men who had left their families and lived on their own for a period and then joined the army could claim their families’ homes as their voting residence. The court concluded that “every reasonable facility should be provided for the casting and canvassing of their votes without the strict application of all the formalities provided by the election law.” See People ex rel. Brush v. Schum, 168 N.Y.S. 391 (N.Y. Sup. 1917).

  59 Debates in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, 1917-1918, vol. 3 (Boston, 1920), 11-12; see also ibid., 4-10, 13-19; Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Bulletins for the Constitutional Convention, 1917-1918, vol. 2, Bulletin 23 (Boston, 1919), 209-225; B. Bradwell Helmer, ed., Revised Statutes of the State of Illinois 1917, containing all the general statutes of the state in force January 1, 1918 (Chicago, 1918), chap. 46, 1396-1400; Revised Record New York, 1915, vol. 2 (Albany, NY, 1916), 1587-1605, 1788-1798, 1801-1822; ibid., vol. 4, 3621-32, 3671, 3680; Laws Passed at the Twentieth Session of the General Assembly of the State of Colorado (Denver, CO, 1915), chap. 76, secs. 1-4, 221-224; P. Orman Ray, “Absent Voters,” American Political Science Review 8 (August 1914): 442-445; “Recent Primary and Election Laws,” American Political Science Review 13 (May 1919): 264-274. For an indication of labor support for absentee voting, see Coast Seamen’s Journal 29 (15 November 1916): 6; Seamen’s Journal, 32 (16 July 1919): 2; ibid., 32 (17 August 1919): 9.

  60 This issue will be addressed in a forthcoming volume. The very rough estimate offered here is based on statistical data for various cities collected in Thernstrom, Other Bostonians, 16-20, 39-42, 220-230; these indicate that in general, only 50 to 60 percent of the residents of American cities still lived in the same city a decade later, and that total population turnover was on the order of 300 percent per decade. The full extent of mobility (including within cities or counties) would be substantially higher. How much of this mobility was interstate rather than intrastate is unclear (and surely varied), but presumably 60 to 80 percent of this recorded movement was intrastate. Thernstrom himself concluded that for the years between 1837 and 1921, roughly one-quarter of the population living in Boston had not been living there a year earlier: since the figure was higher for lower-status occupations, mobility “must have disfranchised a sizable fraction of the working-class population.” Stephan Thernstrom, “Socialism and Social Mobility,” in John H. M. Laslett and Seymour M. Lipset, eds., Failure of a Dream? Essays in the History of American Socialism, rev. ed. (Berkeley, CA, 1984), 415. As indicated in Chapter 8, a careful study conducted in the 1960s suggests that residency laws disfranchised 15 to 20 percent of the electorate, but it is hazardous to project such numbers into the more distant past.

  61 Regarding the history of registration, see Joseph P. Harris, Registration of Voters in the United States (Washington, DC, 1929), esp. 4-6, 65-92. Regarding Massachusetts, see Acts and Laws of Massachusetts (1801), chap. 38. For examples of objections to registration laws, see Debates California 1878, 1019; Debates of the Maryland Constitutional Convention of 1867 (as reprinted from articles reported in the Baltimore Sun) (Baltimore, MD, 1930), 232-237; Texas Constitutional Convention, Debates in the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1875 (Austin, TX, 1930), 191-193.

  62 Richard P. McCormick, The History of Voting in New Jersey: A Study of the Development of Election Machinery, 1664-1911 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1953), 148-165; regarding sunset laws and changing poll hours, see also Massachusetts, Statutes (1869), chap. 62; (1879), chap. 2; (1881), chap. 7; (1884), chap. 299; (1905), chap. 111; Charles E. Merriam and H. F. Gosnell, Non-Voting: Causes and Methods of Control (Chicago, 1924), 233. Several states, including Massachusetts and Illinois, did pass laws requiring employers to give workers time off to vote, but whether employers adhered to these laws is unclear.

  63 Reynolds, Testing Democracy, 49, 60-69, 121-125, 145-152; McCormick, History of Voting in New Jersey, 166; Honorable E. Gurd Grubb, “A Campaign for Ballot Reform,” North American Review 155 (December 1892): 684-693.

  64 Frederick C. Jaher, The Urban Establishment: Upper Strata in Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, and Los Angeles (Urbana, IL, 1982), 501-505; Kenneth Finegold, Experts and Politicians: Reform Challenges to Machine Politics in New York, Cleveland, and Chicago (Princeton, NJ, 1995), 124; Bruce Grant, Fight for a City: The Story of the Union League Club of Chicago and Its Times, 1880-1955 (Chicago, 1955), 68-79.

  65 “An Act Regulating the holding of elections, and declaring the result thereof in cities, villages, and incorporated towns in this State,” approved 19 June 1885, in Merritt Starr and Russell H. Curtis, eds., Annotated Statutes of the State of Illinois, Supplement Embracing Session Laws of 1885 and 1887 (Chicago, 1887), 244-276; Walter C. Jones and Keen H. Addington, eds., Annotated Statutes of the State of Illinois in Force January 1, 1913, vol. 3 (Chicago, 1913), 2687-2688.

  66 Grant, Fight for a City, 79.

  67 “An Act to regulate Elections, passed March 23, 1850,” in Theodore H. Hittell, ed., General Laws of the State of California, 1850-1864, Inclusive, vol. 1 (San Francisco, 1865), 335; Philip J. Ethington, The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900 (New York, 1994), 219-228.

  68 “An Act to provide for the registration of the citizens of this State, and for the enrollment in the several election districts of all the legal voters thereof, and for the prevention and punishment of frauds affecting the elective franchise,” The Statutes of California, Passed at the Sixteenth Session of the Legislature, 1865-66 (Sacramento, CA, 1866), chap. 265, 288-301; Ethington, Public City, 220-228.

  69 Ethington, Public City, 227-228; The Political Code of the State of California (Sacramento, CA, 1872), 169-178.

  70 William Issel and Robert W. Cherny, San Francisco, 1865-1932: Politics, Power and Urban Development (Berkeley, CA, 1986), 127; H. Brett Melendy and Benjamin F. Gilbert, The Governors of California: Peter H. Burnett to Edmund G. Brown (Georgetown, CA, 1965), 229; The Journal of the Assembly during the Twenty-second Session of the Legislature of the State of California, 1877-78 (Sacramento, CA, 1878), 192, 465, 616, 871; “An Act to regulate the registration of voters, and to secure the purity of elections in the city and county of San Francisco,” F. P. Deering, The Codes and Statutes of California, As Amended and in F
orce at the close of the Twenty-Sixth Session of the Legislature, 1885, vol. 1 (San Francisco, 1886), 225-228.

  71 James M. Kerr, ed., The Codes of California, As Amended and in Force at the Close of the Thirty-Sixth Session of the Legislature, 1905, vol. 1 (San Francisco, 1908), sec. 1097, 239, sec. 1094, 233-239; James H. Deering, The Political Code of the State of California, Adopted March 12, 1872, with Amendments Up to and Including those of the Forty-first Session of the Legislature, 1915 (San Francisco, 1916), sec. 1094, 1097, 1098, subdivision 2a, 1104, 237-245.

  72 Harris, Registration, 5, 16-17, 255; New York Times, 13 October 1908. For examples of New York’s frequently changing and detailed registration laws, see John W. Edmonds, ed., Statutes at Large of the State of New York: Containing the General Statutes Passed in the Years 1863, 1864, 1865, and 1866 (Albany, NY, 1868), 88th sess. (1865), chap. 740 at 584-591, 89th sess. (1866), chap. 812 at 848-852; A. G. Conant, ed., Statutes at Large, 1875-1880 (Albany, NY, 1882), 103d sess. (1880), chap. 142 at 928, 103d sess. (1880), chaps. 465, 508 at 1026, 1038; J. C. Thomson, ed., Statutes at Large 1881-88 (Albany, NY, 1890), 104th sess. (1881), chap. 18 at 4, 109th sess. (1886), chap. 649 at 1007; Clarence F. Birdseye, ed., The Revised Statutes, Codes and General Laws of the State of New York, vol. 1 (New York, 1896), 991-998, 1009-1012, 1023. See also Howard A. Scarrow, Parties, Elections, and Representation in the State of New York (New York, 1983), 81-83. For examples of registration laws in Massachusetts, see Massachusetts, Gen. Laws (1874), chap. 376; (1877), chaps. 206-208. The conclusions and observations offered here are based not only on the sources cited but on a systematic examination of the registration laws in twenty-two states. By the mid-1920s, nearly all states had registration systems.