First, some business. I have finished the series about misinformation and outrage in what I have been calling the MSNBC-CNN-Left-Leaning-Social-Media outrage ecosystem. Since last week, I linked the parts together, added a few sections, and revamped the conclusion. The series begins here.
* * *
And now, for this week’s topic:
The Right to Vote
You don’t have an affirmative Constitutional right to vote. (Did you know that?) The right to vote was not (affirmatively) included in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, or any of the other Amendments.
The Fourteenth Amendment, added after the Civil War, contains the Equal Protection Clause, which says that no person can be denied “equal protection of the laws.” Under the Fifteenth Amendment, also added after the Civil War, the right to vote cannot be denied based on race or color. Under the Nineteenth Amendment, the right to vote cannot be denied based on sex or gender. The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, eliminated poll taxes. The tax had been used in some states to keep Black Americans from voting in federal elections. The 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971, lowered the voting age for all elections to 18.
None of this gives anyone an affirmative right to vote. The Supreme Court views the omission of an affirmative right to vote from the Constitution to mean that voting is a privilege that states may administer or infringe as they see fit—as long as the limits and infringement does not discriminate based on race, color, or gender. Pennsylvanian James Wilson, who signed of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, described suffrage as a “darling privilege of free men” but also argued that the privilege could and should be “extended as far as considerations of safety and order will permit.” (Alexander Keyssar, p. 43)
So if a state wants to deny the right to vote to anyone who has been convicted of a felony, the state can do so. If a state wants to deny the right to vote by mail, the state can do that as well. The only thing states can’t do (under the law as it now stands) is pass laws that deny the vote based on race, gender, or a suspect classification like religion or national origin.
A government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” raises a question: Who is included? Who are the people? It is obvious that if you can’t vote, you are not one of the “people” in “We the People.”
If you zoom out and take a look at the history of voting rights from 30,000 feet, you see this:
- In the colonies and early America, the right to vote was (mostly) restricted to white men who owned property. At the same time, a few states, including New Jersey, Maryland, and Connecticut, allowed free Black Americans to vote if they could meet the property requirements. The colony of New Jersey allowed women to vote. A law voting law passed in 1790 referred to voters as “he or she.”
- 1800 – 1850: The right to vote for white men was expanded as the United States became the first country in the western world to remove economic barriers to voting. First, the property ownership requirement was removed, then the requirement that a [white man] pay taxes. At the same time, most states restricted the voting rights of non-white men. By 1850, no states allowed Black men to vote. A few western states allowed women to vote.
- After the Civil War, the vote was extended to Black men in theory. In practice, voter suppression tactics and terror tactics kept most Black men from the ballot box.
- The 19th Amendment added all women, in theory. In practice, it added white women.
- The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s attempted to expand the right to vote to all Americans by enforcing the 14th and 15th Amendments. The 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18.
- The current Supreme Court majority is not a fan of these voting rights acts and has sought to cut them back on the grounds that the Constitution does not contain an affirmative right to vote.
On the theory that history offers perspective and possibilities for moving forward, I’ll start at the very beginning (🎶a very good place to start🎶).
Greek and Roman Democracies
The Greeks gave us the word democracy. Demos means people and cracy means to rule. Even though the word democracy implies all people, the democracies of ancient Greece limited the right to vote to well-educated “free” male citizens. In other words demos = well-educated free men.
Later, in the city-states of the Roman Republic where common people were given the right to vote and thus a voice in government, the right to vote was similarly limited to an elite group of men.
(To be fair, no democracy allows all people to vote. An infant can’t vote. A visitor from another country shouldn’t be allowed to vote. So there must be some regulation.)
The same Greeks who gave us early democracies and the word democracy understood the pitfalls of democracy. It is, therefore, no coincidence that they also gave us the word demagoguery, which literally means a leader of the people but it has come to mean “a person, especially a political leader, who wins support by exciting the emotions of ordinary people rather than by having good or morally right ideas.”
Angie Hobbs, a professor at the University of Sheffield, offers Plato’s chilling account of how a democracy can be subverted by an opportunistic demagogue:
The demagogue gains power by democratic means, claiming to be a champion of ‘the people’ and making wild promises . . . Anyone who opposes the demagogue is labeled an ‘enemy of the people’ and exiled or killed. Such tactics naturally create genuine enemies, and the demagogue quickly acquires a large bodyguard, and eventually a private army. External conflicts are also stirred up to keep the people in need of a strong leader.
Eli Merritt, a political historian at Vanderbilt University says the “golden rule of democracies” is that “Demagogues Destroy Democracy.”
This summary of Plato’s thoughts is from the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy:
In other words, Plato and some of his contemporaries thought most people were too gullible and easily manipulated, and therefore, democracy would fall into the hands of a wily demagogue. Democracy, for Plato, was thus not the best form of government.
We’ve had our share of demagogues. Huey Long was one example. Another, of course, is Trump. Jennifer Mercieca, a rhetorics and communications scholar, analyzed Trump’s rhetoric and tactics as a textbook case of a demagogue:
Voting in the Colonies
Voting didn’t matter much in the colonies because the king was sovereign and he appointed governors and filled other important posts. But colonists were allowed to vote for some offices, including legislators to the lower house of their assemblies.
Early voting practices fed into the worst stereotypes about how easy it would be to manipulate average voters. It was common in Colonial America for candidates for office to offer food and alcoholic drinks to sway possible voters. This is from the Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition,
When twenty-four-year-old George Washington first ran for a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses, he attributed his defeat to his failure to provide enough alcohol for the voters. When he tried again two years later, Washington floated into office partly on the 144 gallons of rum, punch, hard cider, and beer his election agent handed out—roughly half a gallon for every vote he received.
This is from Campaigning in America: A History of Election Practices:
“If a candidate ignored the custom of treating, he often found himself in great difficulty.” When James Madison attempted to campaign in 1777 without “the corrupting influence of spiritous liquors, and other treats,” he lost to a less principled opponent.
At the same time, voting in colonial America was limited to men who owned property. The following comes from Alexander Keyssar’s The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States.
In seven colonies, men had to own land of specified acreage or monetary value in order to participate in elections; elsewhere, the ownership of personal property of a designated value (or in South Carolina, the payment of taxes) could substitute for real estate. (p. 38.)
Aside from property qualifications, there were no firm principles governing colonial voting rights, and suffrage laws accordingly were quite varied. Not only Catholics and Jews, but also Native Americans, free blacks, and non-naturalized aliens could vote in some places and not in others.10 Women were barred expressly in several colonies, including Virginia, but statutes elsewhere made no reference to gender, and in at least a few Massachusetts towns and New York counties propertied widows did legally vote.11 Absentee landowners were enfranchised in Virginia in 1736, which often meant that they could vote in more than one place. In practice, moreover, the enforcement or application of suffrage laws was uneven and dependent on local circumstances. (p. 37.)
The rationale for limiting political power to who those owned land was offered by the jurist William Blackstone who, in 1769 in Commentaries on the Laws of England, wrote that voters without property were too dependent on others to have “will of their own.” He argued that this meant they would be too easily manipulated by those upon whom they were dependent, which “would give a great, an artful, or a wealthy man, a larger share in elections than is consistent with general liberty.”
Ben Franklin made fun of the idea that voting rights should hinge on the amount of property a man owned:
Today a man owns a jackass worth fifty dollars and he is entitled to vote; but before the next election the jackass dies. The man in the meantime has become more experienced, his knowledge of the principles of government, and his acquaintance with mankind, are more extensive, and he is therefore better qualified to make a proper selection of rulers—but the jackass is dead and the man cannot vote. Now gentlemen, pray inform me, in whom is the right of suffrage? In the man or in the jackass?
Another rationale for limiting the vote to people who owned property was that property owners had more of a stake in the laws. The rationale for not including women was the widespread belief that women were incapable of the kind of rational thinking necessary to understand politics and government. (In other words, these rich guys thought that women and poor people were too easily manipulated by men like them, so poor people and women should not be allowed to vote.)
Fear of Demagogues
In 1787, when the nation was in chaos because the Articles of Confederation were failing, George Washington wrote to Lafayette to express his fears that a demagogue would take advantage of the chaos to seize power:
In watching the young nation come close to collapse under the Articles of Confederation, the drafters of the Constitution thus had what they believed to be direct evidence that the common people could only be trusted so far.
Founding a democracy while not trusting the ability of common people to make decisions is obviously problematic. John Adams recognized this problem in 1776, when he said, “It is certain in theory, that the only moral foundation of government is the consent of the people. But to what an extent shall we carry this ‘principle?”
He went on to say:
Adams understood that simply opening the possibility of extending the vote and thereby giving political power to those beyond property-owning men was problematic because:
The Constitutional Convention
It is not surprising that when early American leaders became delegates to the Constitution Convention, they brought their skepticism that the common people could make good decisions and elect the most qualified leaders.
Gouverneur Morris said to his fellow delegates, “We should remember that the people never act from reason alone. The rich will take advantage of their passions & make these the instruments for oppressing them.” Later, he said, “Give the votes to people who have no property, and they will sell them to the rich who will be able to buy them.”
The underlying fear seemed to be this: If you let everyone vote, including the poor and those with less education, what will they vote for?
James Madison laid out the problem as he (and many of his contemporaries) understood it:
The right of suffrage is a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions. The regulation of it is, at the same time, a task of peculiar delicacy. Allow the right exclusively to property, and the rights of persons may be oppressed. The feudal polity alone sufficiently proves it. Extend it equally to all, and the rights of property or the claims of justice may be overruled by a majority without property, or interested in measures of injustice. Of this abundant proof is afforded by other popular Govts. and is not without examples in our own, particularly in the laws impairing the obligation of contracts.
He went on to say that in a civilized and free society, personal rights as well as property rights must be guarded. The problem is this: If you limit the vote to people who have property, they may vote to limit the personal rights of others. But if you allow all people, including those without property to vote, the many (those without property) may vote to seize the property of the few.
In making his point, Madison also explained a concept known as the tyranny of the majority:
Another way of saying the same thing is: allowing non-propertied people to vote would be like two wolves and a lamb deciding on the dinner menu. There would be nothing to stop the wolves (those without property) from preying on the lamb.
At the same time, Madison understood that giving the vote only to the rich created problems because:
The drafters sought to mitigate the potential problem of demagogues and to limit a possible tyranny of the majority by setting up institutional checks and balances so that, should a demagogue come to power, his ability to wreak havoc would be (at least somewhat) limited. Similarly, they viewed dividing the power and creating checks, particularly the judicial branch, as a way to help prevent a tyranny of the majority.
But they were less sure how to deal with the problem of defining who could vote. They understood that deciding who should vote and who should not vote was “a task of peculiar delicacy.”
As far as they were concerned, universal voting rights were obviously out of the question. The enslavers who wrote the Constitution had no intention of giving up the institution of slavery. The drafters of the Constitution (with perhaps a few exceptions) didn’t believe women were capable of thinking about the complex issues involving government and politics. Moreover, they viewed women as property under the dominion of men, which essentially gave a married man two votes.
Even limiting the vote to white men created difficulties in setting down a rule. Where would they draw the line? What should the age requirement be? How much education enabled a person to analyze complex political questions? What about well-educated people who happened not to own land because they were engaged in one of the professions and frequently traveled?
The drafters of the Constitution understood that they needed popular support if the Constitution they drafted would have any hope of being ratified. How would they win popular support if they put right there, in the Constitution itself for everyone to see, that the majority of Americans would have no voice and that “we the people” didn’t really mean “all the people”?
So the Founders Kicked the Problem Down the Road
They opted to leave the issue of who should vote out of the Constitution. Instead, they designated authority for deciding who should vote to the states. This is from Article 1, section 4:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
(When the above was ratified, Senators were chosen by state legislators. The 17th Amendment changed that. Under the 17th Amendment, Senators are elected by the people.)
What happened next was just what you’d expect. People who were excluded wanted to be included and thus began the struggle for the right to vote, which began when the nation was founded and continues to the present day.
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Thank you Teri!~!
I do believe more women leaders will add more voices to create a more balanced electorate.
We should Affirm the Right to vote!
To paraphrase Churchill, democracy is perhaps the worst possible system, except for all the others.
Looking forward to this week’s edition. I think there should be enough grist, between a half billion dollar payment due Monday and today’s (Friday’s) announcement that tRUmp may gain some benefit against a future with *THREE BILLION* in it for him. (Grrrr.)
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1771294692266680467.html
Seth Abramson doesn’t think it will pan out for him though. I have no idea. Comprehending the Truth Social buyout is way outside of my expertise.
Hi, Bruce, I thought you knew: I hope to avoid commenting on the latest Trump drama. I am tired of responding to what I’ve been calling the misinformation-outrage echo chamber. This weekend I will continue writing about the history of voting rights.
That’s right. The recollection became vague and I needed a reminder? Especially since this weekend’s episode seemed a little extraordinary — even for tRUmp. I will still be waiting for Monday evening’s punditry, even if it is without your calming influence. 😀
Every time I think I understand my old history lessons, @Teri_Kanfield enlightens me with new historical perspective. One thing drilled in me was Hobbs vs Locke where Hobbs believed humans were ‘brutes and beasts’ who needed a strong leader to guide them whereas Locke thought humans were capable beings who could make their own decisions.
One thing the Founding Fathers feared was landowners influencing the votes of non -landowners if the latter was permitted to vote. But, doesn’t that say more about the possible corruption of the landed gentry than it does about the ‘common’ man?
Quite refreshing and distressing to get to the core of issues. Your work is so valuable.
There is another very interesting dimension to Madison’s treatment of tyranny of the majority which is separate in logic from the right to vote, but intertwined. He was against requiring super majorities for normal legislation because minority rule was worse than majority rule. Instead he advocated that legislation be passed by different majorities- representatives elected in different ways and depending on different constituents. The Senate, elected for 6 years one third at a time was one, the House elected for two years, all at once, was the other. This plan fell apart not over requiring different majorities, but over the deepening cultural gap between the North and the slavocracy. A version of it would likely still work well if Senate seats were reflected population and not states.
Interesting. I didn’t know that.
Another good one by Teri!
At the rate we are going with incarcerations, soon the inmates may out number those outside the walls. Won’t that provide for interesting election results?
Until you announced the new blog post on Mastodon I had no clue there was not a “Constitutional” right to vote. I always look forward to reading your blogs but this one has really opened my eyes. Holy Tamoly! Thank you!
I think the Heinleinian method of selecting who gets the franchise is intriguing. It is spelled out in his novel “Starship Troopers”.
The franchise is only granted to military veterans in Starship Troopers. Sparing a plot spoiler, the book was written in a few weeks in reaction to the US suspending nuclear tests,[5] (Wikipedia). Heinlein prided himself as an iconoclast.
If by intriguing you mean military junta fascisn, then yes, very intriguing.
A great history and discussion of the right to vote.
It seems one of the greatest fears of white male landowners in relation to giving the right to vote to too people who were not them was that the have-nots would take property away from the haves (this seems, to me, to be the basis for their fear of the “tyranny of the majority”). They seem to have recognized, however, that white male landowners were not always good people who would make good decisions, so they also feared people like themselves would be a bad influence on people who were not like themselves (i.e., white male landowners could become demagogues), and also that white male landowners might not necessarily care overmuch about the rights of anyone else.
In looking at the decisions that have been made by the voters throughout the history of our country, I’m not convinced those decisions have either suffered or improved as more people have been given the vote. That is to say, IF we’re concerned about the quality of the decisions that are made, it doesn’t seem to matter all that much who gets to vote. A majority vote by a million people is not necessarily smarter or stupider than a decision made by ten people.
But that’s not the reason I personally support the idea of expanding the pool of voters. Rather, letting more people vote is the best way I know of to make sure there is at least a chance that everyone’s concerns are heard and considered. Notice I said “a chance”. There are no guarantees, and any human is perfectly capable of ignoring the concerns of others. Both white male landowners, and people who aren’t white male landowners, are perfectly able to concern themselves only with themselves. (Which, I suppose, is another way of saying that they’ll want their voices heard.)
The custom of bribing votes (and I was amused to see the examples, including Washington!) continues today. Lots of people raise noise about not having been given this or that promise which would have benefitted them personally. Far more seldom do they complain that others were not given a promised benefit. Concerns for the welfare of the nation as a whole can only be addressed if there are enough people, in whatever system of government we have, are concerned for the welfare of the nation as a whole.
There is no perfect system, and there can’t be, because there are no perfect people. The best we can do is the best we can do. To paraphrase Churchill, democracy is perhaps the worst possible system, except for all the others.
On a large scale, there really is no such thing as a true democracy where all of governed have an equal say without bias. On a small scale it can happen, but for better or worse, we are a very large country that has some pretty great ideals that we have not yet achieved. We get closer, and then get pushed back whether it’s voting rights for all or myriad other aspects of our society. All we can do is to keep making our voices heard (i.e., take up oxygen as Heather Cox Richardson is fond of saying). And for goodness sake, we can’t sit out any chance to exercise our privilege to vote lest we lose it.
Thank you.
Another great piece and thank you.
Clearly, this is a right that, to a degree, we don’t have and yet take for granted. Ironically, it’s the demagogues and their sycophants complain that it’s abused (i.e. the trope that Democrats was “open borders so immigrants will vote for them).
Another thought (and possibly a good topic if you ever look at it) would be about election litigation. The general public and the media focus on two areas – suppression of the vote or those committing fraud. Those watching a rooting against suppression tend to (and your point here) underestimate that we don’t have the affirmed right to vote. They spend a lot of energy trying to stop “suppression,” when, in my opinion, they should focused on getting their rights affirmed.
Meanwhile, the crusade against fraud is fueled by those who want to suppress the vote and use the public’s lack of understanding to blur the distinctions between voter and election fraud in an effort (whether purposeful or not) to conflate and confuse the two. In my opinion, this is another distraction to keep those folks from advocating for an affirmed right to vote. Like most people, they don’t know they don’t have it.
As usual, very thought-provoking. This is what the Internet was supposed to be and I am glad you are a part of it.
you know , lately you are making me feel much worse. If you wanted us to lose all hope, well done!
I advise you to avoid reading history books. They are not intended to make you feel good. (Warning: I will be writing about history and the law, so if you want to feel good, you should stop reading my blog )
Brilliant! I appreciate your intelligence, scholar, and straightforward communication. Thank you!
“That’s the problem with history. It so seldom reassures.”
I beg to differ. I look back at history and am amazed Homo Sapiens have done so well and come so far. We will continue our relentless march to extinction through the wars we as humanity almost demand. The best is yet to come (flying cars for all?). Also, the worst (see Ukraine, Gaza, and MAGA).
After all, we are as always the epitome of self centered, greedy, yet some what altruistic, species.
Fascinating. The struggle to loosen voting restrictions seems never ending.
Loved the musical theater reference at the top of the piece.
This, gives the politicians, a huge, LOOPHOLE, to, prevent those who are, naturalized and became, citizens of the United States, who aren’t, natural-born, citizens their rights to vote, making the U.S., into, an, elitist society, where, only a selected few, are, allowed to decide on the fates of the, majority, and, power still gets, ABUSED, and, U.S., become, a part of the, “un-free world”, and, this, destroys the reason why U.S., came into “being” in, the, first place, as a land where, people are “guaranteed” the freedom of religion, etc., etc., etc., this is, truly, bad for, democracy.
Thank you, Teri, for this informative analysis the right to vote and history of the expansion of, and set-backs to, the voting franchise.
Demagoguery will always be with us and currently is more blatantly obvious than at any previous time in my 65 adult years.
Demagogues clearly understand that the common sense of the individual citizen, especially during frustrating times, readily succumbs to the emotions of the crowd. These cunning manipulators then effectively shut down democratic processes grounded in rational reflection and argument, decry compromise, and obstruct development of solutions to pressing social-economic-political problems.
Ever since Richard M. Nixon utilized his Southern Strategy and Newt Gingrich reduced politics to all out warfare with the acquisition and retention of power as its primary objective—most Republican politicians and their media enablers have inflamed the emotions of their crowd—aggrieved Whites—to an alarming degree and have institutionalized demagoguery.
Many current GOP politicians and their media enablers employ the demagogue’s favored tactics on a daily basis: gross oversimplification, fear mongering, scapegoating, emotional appeals, accusations that opponents are disloyal or weak, attacks on the news media, obstructive refusals of all compromise–and, yes, bald faced lies.
Among the GOP’s anti-democratic and demagogic strategies are: gerrymandering; voter suppression; spotlighting divisive “social/moral” issues; identification with a shallow militaristic “patriotism” and a narrow “Christian” fundamentalism; and the branding of socially beneficial programs as instances of unquestionably evil “socialism”.
Is it any wonder that the Republican Party is home to so many White supremacists, White Christian nationalists and authoritarians who are doing all within their power to halt and reverse progress toward multiracial, one-person-one-vote representative democracy?
Familiarize yourself with and act on Teri’s recommendations for reversing this trend.
Thank you. Few seem to go back to Tricky Dicky. Republican Leadership knew about the Paris PeaeTalks treason, so I promote that over The Southern Project. The Newt certainly made party before country explicit. #TheRepublicanPartyMustDie (be disbanded)
I hate the iPad editing interface
You make it plain here, Teri. The Constitution needs to be amended. There needs to be an affirmative right for all citizens, allowing for few exceptions. (e.g. possibly allow convicted criminals currently incarcerated to be exempted. Out of prison? You can vote.)
I misplaced this response below:
Given the current state of political polarization and Republican dominance in so many state legislatures, attempts to amend the Constitution might make a bad situation worse. The calling of a Constitutional Convention could prove disastrous. The major framers of the Constitution were Sons of the Enlightenment who aspired to become remembered as statesmen. Many of today’s elected politicians are opportunistic Spawn of the Darkening who are little concerned with how they will one day be remembered.
Not a convention, an amendment.
Many, many amendments ate needed. This seems to be another I will add to my list.
Some states allow everyone, including those in prison, to vote.
That would be an allowed exception, not a requirement. Gotta get it through 38 state governments.
At the rate we are going with incarcerations, soon the inmates may out number those outside the walls. Won’t that provide for interesting election results?
So, we are not a Democratic Constitutional Republic…
Yes, we are. There is no constitutional democratic republic that does not restrict who can vote. The question is how the vote is restricted.
And I am back to “Starship Troopers”.
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
1) First sentence of last paragraph: “What happened next what just what you’d expect.” I think you meant the first “what” in that sentence to be “was.”
2) Also in the bulleted list that begins: “If you zoom out and take a look at the history of voting rights from 30,000 feet, you see this:”
would you please add that the 26th amendment established a nationally standardized minimum voting age of 18? That happened in 1971, the year I turned 18, and it was a big deal to me.
3) On the subject of women’s suffrage in the U.S., I highly recommend Ken Burn’s documentary, “Not For Ourselves Alone” to your readers (and yourself, if you’ve not seen it). I also own the companion book by Ken Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward.
Thanks. An interesting read. I do have one comment:
“After the Civil War, the vote was extended to Black men in theory. In practice, voter suppression tactics and terror tactics kept most Black men from the ballot box.”
I think it’s worth mentioning the end of post-Civil War reconstruction here. It was the disasterous end of reconstruction that primarily led to widespread voter suppression in the south. This is one aspect of our history that is severely under taught.
Yes!
Given the current state of political polarization and Republican dominance in so many state legislatures, attempts to amend the Constitution might make a bad situation worse. The calling of a Constitutional Convention could prove disastrous. The major framers of the Constitution were Sons of the Enlightenment who aspired to become remembered as statesmen. Many of today’s elected politicians are opportunistic Spawn of the Darkening who are little concerned with how they will one day be remembered.
ARTICLE FIVE: The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.