Witless, Nitwits and ner-do-wells!

From time-to-time, I receive a missive from family and friends with the witless statement, "African Americans are the only group of people who require PERMISSION under the United States Constitution to vote!"
How many times do I have to say This is flat-out untrue!

The basic right of all American citizens to vote, regardless of race, is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and can't expire with the Voting Rights Act.

The Voting Rights Act DOES NOT grant us permission to vote. Our right to vote is granted by being born in the US and being citizens of the United States. The Voting Rights Act creates enforcement mechanisms to assure that our right to vote is not abridged by certain common past practices, i.e. poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, etc. We have ALWAYS had the right to vote by virtue of being born here. However it has only been since the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments (1865-1870) at the end of the War Between the States when this right was recognized, protected and enforced.

Amendment XV (1870)
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.


Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. (Done during Reconstruction and also decades later by the Voting Rights Act.)

The basic prohibition against discrimination in voting contained in the Fifteenth amendment and in the Voting Rights Act does not expire in 2007 — it does not expire at all; it is permanent.

To say that we need "permission" to vote is to accept the despicable notion that we are less than human beings and less than citizens in this nation. I, for one, will NEVER accept that premise, nor will I ever beg for my God-given rights or try to assert them from a kneeling position. I will ALWAYS assert my rights standing upright on my own two feet like a proud man!

I wish Jesse Jackson and the rest of the race hustlers would pick-up a copy of the Constitution every once in a while and actually READ it and stop spreading this scurrilous LIE!!

There are essentially only one way that Blacks can have their votes legally stripped away: Amend the Constitution to do so. That requires either 2/3 affirmative vote of both the House and Senate plus ratified by 3/4 of the State legislatures or a constitutional convention called by 2/3 of the state legislatures and the amendment ratified by 3/4 of the states.