This topic has come up in other threads. I have stated that I don't believe there is a right to vote. Others have countered that the 15th, 19th, 23rd, 24th and 26th amendment guarantee the right to vote. My argument to that is that those amendments, essentially, forbid the federal government from discriminating due to race, age, gender, etc but don't gaurantee a right to vote.
I found this:
The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College. U.S. Const., Art. II, §1. This is the source for the statement in McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1, 35 (1892), that the State legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary;
it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by State legislatures in several States for many years after the Framing of our Constitution. Id., at 28—33. History has now favored the voter, and in each of the several States the citizens themselves vote for Presidential electors. When the state legislature vests the right to vote for President in its people, the right to vote as the legislature has prescribed is fundamental; and one source of its fundamental nature lies in the equal weight accorded to each vote and the equal dignity owed to each voter. The State, of course, after granting the franchise in the special context of Article II, can take back the power to appoint electors. See id., at 35 (“[T]here is no doubt of the right of the legislature to resume the power at any time, for it can neither be taken away nor abdicated”) (quoting S. Rep. No. 395, 43d Cong., 1st Sess.).
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZPC.html
it seems to me that this decision is saying that the Supreme court has found that state legislatures determine whether or not there is a "right" to vote or not.
Tthoughts?
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