Expand voting with even-year elections by voting YES on 2E

By Kurt Nordback, published in the Daily Camera:

A big part of America’s story has been the halting but long-term trend toward expansion of the electorate. At our country’s beginning, voting was generally limited to white male property owners. The first major change came — perhaps surprisingly — thanks to President Andrew Jackson, who championed suffrage for non-property owners. In 1870, the 15th Amendment nominally gave Black men the vote, but in practice, Jim Crow took this right away from them for close to a century. The Snyder Act of 1924 gave all Native Americans citizenship and therefore the right to vote, though state-level restrictions continued to limit indigenous people’s suffrage for decades. Women finally won the vote with the 19th Amendment, almost 80 years after Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton started the American women’s suffrage movement. We got the Voting Rights Act in 1965, and the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 in 1971.

Today, most adult citizens have the legal right to vote, with notable exceptions including those in prison and convicted felons. Unfortunately, we’ve seen renewed efforts at voter suppression around the country. The struggle continues. But what’s clear is that democracy is stronger when more people vote. Voting engages citizens and increases our investment in government and our democracy. It gives us a voice. It makes politicians pay attention. It brings pride. It shows that we matter.

It hasn’t been a smooth journey, but as voters have become a larger portion of the population, our democracy has become stronger, fairer, more resilient, more just. In this fall’s election, Boulder voters have the opportunity to take another small yet significant step along this arc of history, by moving City Council elections from odd years to even years, when participation is much higher. Please support democracy. Please support even-year elections.