More than 11,000 amendments have been proposed in Congress to the constitution, and only 27 have become law. But that hasn’t stopped members of Congress from trying to add to that total and make their mark on the founding document of the United States. This year, congressmen and senators have proposed nearly 70 different amendments to the constitution. Amending the constitution is an intentionally difficult process. In order to be enacted, an amendment needs to be approved by two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate, and then has to be approved by the legislatures in at least three-fourths of states (or 38 out of 50). The last amendment was passed more than two decades ago. … Unbeknown to many Americans, there is no explicit right to vote in the US constitution. While US citizens have the right to bear arms, the right not to have troops quartered in their homes and to trial by jury in a federal civil law “where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars”, there is no affirmative right to cast a ballot.
There has long been a burgeoning movement in liberal intellectual circles to fix this, particularly in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election when countless voters were purged from the rolls in Florida and prevented from casting a ballot, and the 2013 US supreme court decision that neutered a key prong of the Voting Rights Act.
The proposed amendment, sponsored by Representative Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, provides that “every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides” and makes clear that “Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation”.
Full Article: Enshrining the right to vote and 2015’s other constitutional amendment ideas | Law | The Guardian.