National: Iraq's new constitution has something America's doesn't: The right to vote | Salon

Is it time, at long last, for the citizens of the United States to enjoy the constitutional right to vote for the people who govern them? Phrased in that way, the question may come as a shock. The U.S. has waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan justified, at least in rhetoric, by the claim that people deserve the right to vote for their leaders. Most of us assume that the right to vote has long been enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Not according to the Supreme Court. In Bush v. Gore (2000), the Court ruled that “[t]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.” That’s right. Under federal law, according to the Supreme Court, if you are a citizen of the United States, you have a right to own a firearm that might conceivably be used in overthrowing the government. But you have no right to wield a vote that might be used to change the government by peaceful means.
FairVote, a nonprofit organization that leads the fight for electoral reform in the U.S., points out:
The right to vote is the foundation of any democracy. Yet most Americans do not realize that we do not have a constitutionally protected right to vote. While there are amendments to the U.S. Constitution that prohibit discrimination based on race (15th), sex (19th) and age (26th), no affirmative right to vote exists.
And that’s just the beginning. While the Voting Rights Act eliminated overt disenfranchisement based on racial discrimination, state governments retain many tools that state politicians can use to disfranchise citizens, not only in state and local elections but also in federal elections. Among these tools are onerous voter registration requirements, like the photo ID laws being pushed by Republicans in many states to disenfranchise low-income Democratic voters. Then there are laws that make forfeiture of voting rights for certain classes of convicted criminals permanent, even after they have served their time and rejoined society with otherwise full rights. This form of disenfranchisement falls disproportionately on the white, black and Latino poor, not on white-collar criminals in the social elite.  According to Bryan Stevenson, a professor of law at NYU, in another decade more citizens of Alabama may be disenfranchised by law than before the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.
Full Article: Voting is not a right – Salon.com.