Voting Rights and Models of Voting Behavior

A set of vocabulary-style flashcards covering key terms, amendments, and landmark cases related to voting rights, suffrage, and the expansion of the electorate from the notes provided.

Electorate

The body of citizens who are eligible and participate in voting; the voters at the polls.

Franchise

The right to vote; the legal permission to participate in elections.

Suffrage

The right to vote in political elections; expanded over time to include more groups.

Reconstruction Amendments

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments aimed at abolishing slavery, establishing citizenship, and protecting voting rights.

Thirteenth Amendment

Abolished slavery throughout the United States.

Fourteenth Amendment

Granted citizenship and guaranteed equal protection under the law.

Fifteenth Amendment

Prohibited denying the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Grandfather Clause

A provision allowing individuals to vote if their grandfathers could vote, used to circumvent barriers; later struck down as unconstitutional.

Literacy Test

A device to restrict voting by requiring the ability to read or understand; often used with other barriers to disenfranchise Black voters.

Poll Tax

A fee to vote used to deter participation; outlawed in federal elections by the 24th Amendment and challenged in later cases.

White Primary

Southern party primaries restricted to white voters; ruled unconstitutional in Smith v. Allwright (1944).

Jim Crow

Laws and practices in the Southern states that enforced racial segregation and disenfranchisement of African Americans after Reconstruction.

Seventeenth Amendment

Established direct popular elections for U.S. Senators, reducing the influence of state legislatures.

Nineteenth Amendment

Gave women the right to vote (women's suffrage) in 1920.

Twenty-Third Amendment

Gave residents of Washington, D.C. the right to vote for president by appointing electors; limited to the least populous state’s level.

Twenty-Fourth Amendment

Prohibited denying the right to vote by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

Twenty-Sixth Amendment

Lowered the voting age to 18 and prohibited denial of the right to vote on account of age.

Guinn v. United States (1915)

Supreme Court case that struck down the grandfather clause as unconstitutional.

Smith v. Allwright (1944)

Supreme Court case ruling the white primary violated the Equal Protection Clause.

Susan B. Anthony

Leading suffragist who voted illegally in 1872; testified to the long fight for women's voting rights.

Jeanette Rankin

First woman elected to Congress (Montana, 1916), a milestone in women’s political participation.