Although the U.S. Constitution has always provided a right to vote, the right hasn’t always been as expansive as it is now. According to the National Archives, in the first presidential election, in 1789, only 6 percent of the population was eligible to vote.
The Constitution originally allowed states a broad right to qualify and restrict voter eligibility. At first, states generally limited voting rights to white men, ages 21 and older, who either owned land or paid taxes.
Now, all of those restrictions are illegal. By way of expanding voting rights, states’ abilities to restrict voter eligibility have been severely reduced through constitutional amendments and federal laws. The expansion of citizenship to include previously excluded groups has also allowed more of the population the right to vote.
Here are notable points in the development of American voting rights.
1868: All naturalized and native-born people are granted full citizenship by the 14th Amendment. This is one of the post-Civil War “Reconstruction Amendments,” designed to incorporate newly free Black Americans into society. Citizenship does not guarantee a right to vote — it only makes a person eligible for whatever voting rights his or her state allows. Certain states would continue to restrict Black people from voting at least into the 20th century.
1869: Women in Wyoming are the first in the nation to have their right to vote guaranteed by a state law. Several others would pass similar laws, until these laws were obviated by the adoption of the 19th Amendment.
1870: Voting restrictions on the basis of “race, color or previous condition of servitude” are banned by the 15th Amendment, another Reconstruction Amendment. In response, certain states create new requirements for voting eligibility that effectively prevent Black people from voting — literacy tests, voting fees and others.
1887: Native Americans become eligible for citizenship — if they dissociate from their tribes — through the Dawes Act. Again, this does not necessarily grant a right to vote, but it gives Native Americans whatever voting rights their states allow. In most cases, only the men would have been able to vote.
1920: Voting restrictions on the basis of sex are banned by the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote in every state.
1924: Native Americans are granted full citizenship by the Indian Citizenship Act.
1961: Residents of Washington, D.C. are given the right to vote in presidential elections by the 23rd Amendment. The city is given a number of electors according to its population, as if it were a state, with the provision that it may never have more electors than the least populous state.
1964: Poll taxes are banned by the 24th Amendment. In certain states, a poll tax — a fee to vote — had effectively prevented poor people from voting.
1965: The Voting Rights Act gives the federal government a right to oversee all elections, unifying voting eligibility rules across all states. The law also explicitly bans some requirements for voting eligibility that certain states had used, such as literacy tests.
1971: The voting age is established as 18 years old by the 26th Amendment. Youth anti-war groups had argued that if a person can serve in the military, they also ought to be able to vote. It was the fastest amendment ever, being ratified barely three months after it was proposed.
1986: Expatriates and people serving overseas are given the right to vote in federal elections by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which covers members of the uniformed services and the U.S. Merchant Marine as well as their family members, employees of the U.S. federal government who are living outside the country, and private citizens living outside the country.
1993: Registering to vote becomes more accessible by the Voter Registration Act, which legally guarantees an opportunity to register any time you get or renew a driver’s license or apply for public assistance. It also requires that state election materials must be mailed through the Postal Service.