Sunday, January 5, 2014

Is every citizen a voter?

In the United States, voting is a right reserved to citizens, but it is not an obligation. Further, voting is not an inalienable right. It can be judicially revoked in extraordinary circumstances, including the commission of a felony or the finding of mental incapacity by a court. Furthermore, this right cannot be exercised by citizens until they attain adulthood.
In other words, all citizens are potential voters, but not all citizens are actual voters. Some citizens have had their right deprecated by the courts, some citizens are awaiting adulthood pending which they cannot exercise their right, and still other citizens have made an individual choice not to exercise the right to vote at all.
However, unlike the more complex question of citizens and voters, non-citizens are always non-voters as citizenship is a prerequisite to participation in the political process.


Not every citizen is a voter, but every voter should be a citizen—at least in federal elections, per the Constitution and the laws of every state in the Union.
The Constitution, per Article 1, Section 2, requires that the electors (or voters) for members of the House of Representatives must meet the same requirements as they would to vote for their state legislature. Each state includes US citizenship as part of their voting eligibility requirements.
However, while this makes every citizen eligible to vote, many citizens choose not to register, even with nationwide efforts to make registration easy (Motor Voter registration being one example). A Pew Charitable Trusts study showed that the main reason people choose not to register is because they are disinterested in politics and believe their vote will not make a difference.
Tell that to Shelly Simonds, a Virginia legislative candidate who lost her race in December by a coin flip after she finished tied with David Yancey. That one person in her district who chose not to register to vote, to not exercise their franchise, might have made the difference.
https://usconstitution.net/xconst_A1Sec2.html

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2017/06/why-are-millions-of-citizens-not-registered-to-vote

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