section_path: History around the world/United States
section_name: United States
paragraph_text: United States
  
  The Constitution of the United States did not originally define who was eligible to vote, allowing each state to decide this status. In the early history of the U.S., most states allowed only white male adult property owners to vote (about 6% of the population). By 1856 property ownership requirements were eliminated in all states, giving suffrage to most white men. However, tax-paying requirements remained in five states until 1860 and in two states until the 20th century.
  
  Since the Civil War, five amendments to the Constitution have limited the ways in which the right to vote may be restricted in American elections, though none have added a general right to vote.
  
  The use of grandfather clauses to allow European-Americans to vote while excluding African-Americans from voting was ruled unconstitutional in the 1915 decision Guinn v. United States. States continued to use literacy tests and poll taxes, which also disenfranchised poor white citizens. Racial equality in voting was substantially secured after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a major victory in the Civil Rights Movement. State elections, it was not until the 1966 decision Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that the U.S. Supreme Court declared state poll taxes violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.