What 250 years of voting rights battles tell us about today
The Constitution has never contained a broad, affirmative right to vote, which helps explain why voting in America has always depended so much on where you live.
Some states expanded the vote earlier than we typically remember. Vermont, for example, adopted a broad franchise before the federal Constitution existed. Others expanded the franchise and later narrowed it: Revolutionary Pennsylvania extended voting rights to taxpaying men before limiting the vote to white men in 1838. Taken together, these examples show that American voting rights have never moved in one direction for everyone at once.
Let’s start with Vermont, one of the earliest examples of a state taking an unusually expansive view of who should have the vote. In 1777, before the federal Constitution existed, Vermont adopted its own, eliminating both property and taxpaying requirements for voting. Why? Because of a man whose name you’ve probably heard before: Ethan Allen.
Allen led what historian Alexander Keyssar describes in his book “The Right to Vote” as an “unruly political—and military—process” involving his militia group, the Green Mountain Boys. Allen’s men roamed what ultimately became Vermont back when New York still claimed the territory, resisting New York’s authority by stopping sheriffs, intimidating New York-backed settlers, burning buildings, and sometimes flogging opponents.
https://www.votebeat.org/national/2026/07/04/america-250-why-voting-rights-access-depend-on-states/