Voting In America

Americans pride themselves over living in a representative democracy, a republic in which citizens have an influence on the government. A democracy entails ...Citizens are able to influence the government by electing representatives they believe would best embody their beliefs. Voting in the United States has not always been a right granted to all citizens. Historically, white men of elite status were the only ones allowed ability to vote. however, with the ratification with amendments such as: the Fifteenth Amendments which provided African-Americans the right to vote, the Nineteenth Amendment which granted women’s suffrage, and the Twenty-Sixth lowered the voting to eighteen years old to previously twenty on years of age. Through these
According to “” By Tom File, Americans with low education, lower levels of education, the younger Americans, and minorities are among some of the demographic groups experiencing the lowest voter rates. On the other hand, the wealthy, higher educated, older, and non minority white Americans are among the demographic groups with the highest voter turnouts. (Cite) the majority of elected officials are older, white, and privileged white males. This has been a trend since the commencement of the United States. In modern times, the demographic groups with the lowest voter turnouts attribute to this cycle. It is a paradoxical situation where those who categorize into these demographic groups chose not to vote because candidates from similar demographics such as minorities typically do not reason. Individuals in these demographic groups that would consider running do not do so because
Corruption among government officials makes citizens more susceptible to being taken advantage of. Editor of The Atlantic, Andrew Cohen states in his article “George Will Gets Everything Wrong About Voting” , that “partisan state officials all over the country” have made it “harder, or impossible for people who [want] to register to vote to actually do so.” (cite) Not only are excessive amounts of people not voting, but representatives themselves are restricting those that do wish to vote. Meaning, elected officials misuse their position and power to further their agenda. To clarify, these type of representatives proposed legislation that would gain them popularity among the higher voting demographic groups rather than what would benefit the mass population. If these constituents are satisfied, the politicians are able to advance in their political careers. An example of this is the country’s distribution of wealth. Wealthy Americans are among the demographic groups with the highest voter turnouts. These wealthy voters want to ensure their wealth and elect representatives whom they believe will best protect and allow them to expand their wealth. Representatives are aware of this and in turn create legislation to please their wealthy constituents in order to remain in good public standing and become re-elected by these voters. This, in hindsight, is a cycle that attributes the prominence of the