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Profs and Pints presents: “Our Threatened Vote,” with Allan J. Lichtman, distinguished professor of history at American University and author of The Embattled Vote in America: From the Founding to the Present.
With crucial elections coming up in November, hear Allan Lichtman, author of The Case for Impeachment and famously accurate presidential election prognosticator, teach a lesson on the troubled history of voting in America and current threats to our democracy.
Americans have fought and died for the right to vote. Yet the world’s oldest continuously operating democracy guarantees the franchise to no one, not even citizens. This lack of universal voting rights originated in a crucial mistake by America’s founders: omitting a right to vote from the Constitution and leaving the franchise to the discretion of individual states. The lack of a constitutional guarantee has meant that the right to vote has both expanded and contracted over time, depending on political circumstances.
Today, your voting rights are in greater jeopardy than at any time in recent years. Politicians that benefit from voter suppression rely on bogus claims of voter fraud to call for voter identification laws, political gerrymandering, registration requirements, felon disenfranchisement, and voter purges.
Professor Lichtman, who captivated a Profs and Pints crowd last November with his discussion of the case for impeaching President Donald Trump, will argue at only a revived grassroots political movement can reverse the tide of voter suppression and guarantee Americans the right to vote, which grounds all other rights in our democracy. (Advance tickets: $12. Door: $15, save $2 with student ID.)
