Constitution of the United States
Criticisms
The Constitution did not originally define who was eligible to vote, allowing each state to determine who was eligible. In the early history of the U.S., most states allowed only white male adult property owners to vote. Until the Reconstruction Amendments were adopted between 1865 and 1870, the five years immediately following the Civil War, the Constitution did not abolish slavery, nor give citizenship and voting rights to former slaves. These amendments did not include a specific prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sex; it took another amendment – the Nineteenth, ratified in 1920 – for the Constitution to prohibit any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex.
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