Voting Rights Through Social Science and History Lenses

Table of Contents

Introduction
Researching the Topic: Voting Rights
Voting Rights Through the History Lens
Voting Rights Through the Social Science Lens
Conclusion
References

Introduction

The four lenses (perspectives) in liberal arts represent approaches in which various topics can be framed. Each of the lenses, humanities, social science, natural sciences, and history, has its own framework that allows for enhancing the focus on particular areas of the issue under question. They can be employed both as learned perspectives or ways of interpreting how humans perceive and experience things. The first lens, humanities, represents the disciplines aimed at studying specifically human actions and works, while the second lens, social science, explores how humans act and interact within their respective social environments. The third lens, natural sciences, encompasses methods of understanding the physical world through testable hypotheses and experimental verification. The fourth lens, history, explores the past of humanity using various sources to trace relevant events and look for patterns.

Researching the Topic: Voting Rights

The topic of voting rights is highly relevant and multi-dimensional as it encompasses considerations of political freedoms and the capacity of a population to participate in civic rights, as well as includes discussions of gender and racial issues. It is common knowledge that voting is considered the cornerstone of democracy not only in the US but worldwide and is the crucial right upon which all other civil liberties rely (Freedom House, 2022). However, to explore the topic more deeply, it is necessary to look at the history of voting rights as they did not emerge straight away and without conflict. In the United States, the struggle for establishing equal voting rights for the entire population dates back to the earliest days of the countrys development, while it was only in 2008 that there was the most diverse electorate in US history (ACLU, 2023).

The social science lens will add to the historical perspective of voting rights exploration by illustrating the importance of voting for society as a whole, including the strategies that motivate people to vote as well as the barriers that some groups may experience during voting. When exploring the topic, essential keywords may include the following: history of voting rights, voting rights movement, barriers to voting rights, voting rights and inequality, and others. To answer the questions posed for the current exploration, a search for scholarly and other resources will be implemented, filtering sources by relevance as well as the quality and fullness of information.

Voting Rights Through the History Lens

In American history, a great democratic experiment started at the end of the eighteenth century when a narrow subset of society, which included male landowners, was granted the right to vote (Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2019). Even though the limitations in voting rights started decreasing in the ensuing years and decades, many states, predominantly Southern, built new obstacles to ensure that African American men did not have the right to make decisions about the countrys political orientation. As the country continued its development, voting rights began to be considered a bipartisan priority. However, after the end of the Civil War in 1865, when enslaved people were freed and granted the right to vote, there were still strict requirements for voting qualification, such as literacy tests and poll taxes (Library of Congress, n.d.). The limitations were put in place to prevent poor and uneducated groups from making decisions about public policy.

All restrictive measures on voting rights were only overturned after World War II and the struggle of minorities to gain equality through the Civil Rights Movement. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson, intending to prohibit any legal barriers existing at the state or local levels that kept African Americans from exercising their voting rights (National Archives, 2022). Therefore, the Voting Rights Act is historically significant because it outlawed any biases and discriminatory practices that ran rampant for decades. Instead, it enforced the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution that gave African American men the right to vote but was consistently ignored by additional laws. The history of voting rights shows a more than a century-long battle to guarantee equal opportunities for the population regardless of race, gender, and socioeconomic background.

As illustrated by the exploration of voting rights history, there was a serious issue concerning the social aspect of the countrys development. Race was a detrimental factor in the governments decision to suppress voting rights and narrow the capacity of some groups to make decisions on country policy. The social science lens allows for exploring the connection between inequality and voting rights, which have been shown to have a direct relationship. The less socially disadvantaged individuals are, the more likely their voting rights are to be limited (Swabb & Yang, 2022). Thus, civil rights and social justice are drivers of voting rights and behaviors of the population.

The history lens analysis showed that race and income dictated whether populations were able to engage in the electoral process and face limited to no barriers. Modern scholars focused their attention on the current inequalities and determined that both race and socioeconomic status influence the capacity of populations to engage in elections (Smith & Pattabhiraman, 2020). Specifically, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a dramatic impact on the social and economic status of disadvantaged populations, voter participation, and political power were reduced (Wolf, 2022). Both economic deprivation and poor health that affected disadvantaged populations made it harder for them to exercise their voting rights.

Therefore, inequality can be considered a form of voter suppression because economic inequality makes it possible for affluent and wealthy groups to exercise their power during elections. As a result, the interests of the less socially and economically advantaged groups are placed on the back burner, which means that poorer and working-class people have less incentive to engage in elections (Smith & Pattabhiraman, 2020). Besides, it was found that the suppression of voters and bureaucratic limitations made voting in the US more complex than in other developed nations (Washington Center for Equitable Growth, 2021). Thus, despite the common understanding of the need for equal opportunities in voting, it still has not been met.

Conclusion

To conclude, the exploration of voting rights from historical and social science lenses illustrated persistent gaps in access to exercising their political freedoms. The historical lenses used in the current discussion are similar in offering a broader perspective on voting rights, including relevant developments. They are different in the fact that the historical lens allows only looking at past events while the social science lens provides a more up-to-date look at the issue. In further exploration, it is necessary to look at the strategies that could allow elimination voting rights barriers.