While the constitutional amendments related to voting rights have suggested that all citizens ought to be included in the franchise, the modern right to vote has nonetheless been heavily contested. The efforts to meaningfully include all citizens in the franchise in the century after the Nineteenth Amendment (and the 150 years after the Fifteenth Amendment) have been complicated, fraught, and have often diverged from the underlying idea of inclusion. Tensions still exist in modern voting rights law regarding the meaning of the right to vote, as illustrated by the litigation and activism around issues such as partisan and racial gerrymandering, voter identification, and proof of citizenship requirements. These examples reveal the complexities of the project of democratic inclusion, and this panel will explore how those complexities have evolved and are manifest in today’s right-to-vote doctrine.
The Section on Constitutional Law held a virtual business meeting prior to the Annual Meeting.
Business meeting of Election Law at program conclusion.