Jan 13, 2019 5 min read

Who should vote?

The Republicans have a problem that will only grow as time goes on. The Republican base is white and older, and since President Trump’s actions and attitudes towards women have encouraged many women to leave the party, the base is also disproportionately male. Demographic trends do not bode well for any party relying on such a base, which has led some to argue that demography is destiny. But this can be overplayed. Whites will no longer be the majority in 2045, which is a long way from now (and they’ll still be the largest minority). And such thinking ignores the fact that parties evolve, and ideology is not hardwired to demographic characteristics.

After the 2012 election, Republicans conducted an analysis of Mitt Romney’s loss in hopes of coming up with some ideas that might allow a victory in the next election. The report suggested that Republicans need to try to appeal to the nation’s most rapidly growing demographic, Hispanics. Many Hispanics are Catholic, and also have conservative social views, so such an appeal seemed smart. Many Republican leaders are either Hispanic (Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz) or have connections to the Hispanic community (Jeb Bush speaks Spanish and has a Hispanic wife). Evidently, Trump did not get the memo. He ran a campaign that opened with a speech that focused on how Mexican drug traffickers and criminals sent by the Mexican government were flooding the US bent on terrorizing American citizens. Trump ran a campaign based on fear, especially fear of immigrants. Having stoked this fear, Trump sought to reassure his supporters that if they elected him, he would build a great wall and keep them all safe. While he lost the popular vote by more than 3 million votes (so the 2012 analysis was not wrong), by winning enough votes in key states (WI, MI & PA), he won the election. Repeating that success using the same game plan will be difficult, if only because his electorate is “aging out”, and will be replaced by younger voters.

Traditionally, one of the differences between the Democrats and the conservative parties (the Republicans, Whigs, Federalists) in the US has been about who should be voting. Those concerns were based on three things; competence, independence and who they might favor (politics). The founders left who could vote up to the states; there is no right to vote in the constitution. Voting was a privilege, and most states only allowed propertied white men to vote; although NJ initially allowed women (unmarried women who owned enough property; married women could not vote, because the property in a marriage was considered to be owned by the man), and a few Northern states without many African Americans allowed them to vote. But these exceptions were eliminated soon after the birth of the nation, ironically as part of the movement of expanding the vote for white men by removing property restrictions. Interestingly enough in today’s climate, many states, especially those in the West, allowed immigrant non-citizens to vote (though most states required that they declare their intention to become citizens).

Most states had property restrictions to vote for two reasons; first, the founders believed that property ownership was a testament to competency. Because America had bountiful resources, the founders believed that any competent person could acquire property, and conversely, anyone who did not acquire property, was not competent to be making decisions about governing. Another reason was the fear that the property-less would use the power of the government that they could control (through their greater numbers) to deprive the wealthy of their property, so it was an insurance policy against the mob.

At the time, women were considered to be like children, incapable of being on their own and dependent upon their husbands or fathers. Dependency was another of the founders’ fears; people who were dependent on someone (parent, husband, employer) might be forced to vote the way the person on whom they were dependent wanted (there were no secret ballots until the late 19th century). They especially feared the growing class of property-less mechanics in the city, who worked for wages and were thought to be controlled by their employer. The founders wanted a system of government based on independent, virtuous men who would make good decisions.

Political considerations showed up early; the Federalists were concerned about Irish and French immigrants, who supported their rivals the anti-federalists (AKA the Democratic Republicans, precursors of the modern Democratic Party), and enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), which delayed citizenship for recent immigrants. During the Progressive Era, Republican reformers feared urban political bosses who controlled the immigrant vote in the cities, and implemented good government policies (registration, literacy tests, at-large voting) to curb their power. And of course, the votes of African Americans were feared initially by the conservative white Democrats of the South who implemented Jim Crow restrictions (all white primaries, literacy tests, poll taxes), and after LBJ shifted the stance of the Democratic Party and passed the Voting Rights Act (1965), the Republicans wooed conservative whites by stoking racial fears and implementing their own efforts to stymie African Americans at the polls (gerrymandering, voting roll purges, strict ID requirements).

Our government, which claims its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, achieves that legitimacy through the ballot box. But Republicans have recognized that if the will of the people is accurately expressed, their political power will be substantially reduced, so they have made efforts to implement their policies by less democratic means. They understand that preventing a Democratic vote is as good as earning a Republican one, and have focused their efforts on limiting the power of the growing Democratic electorate. Next time, I will provide specifics on how they’ve done that.

Kent James is an East Washington resident and has degrees in history and policy management at Carnegie Mellon University.