00:00For a nation that prides itself on its democracy, America hasn't made the act of voting particularly easy.
00:12We have 13,000 election jurisdictions in this country that run elections 13,000 different ways.
00:20Election officials get to do different things from one place to the next.
00:24Some voters vote on different kinds of ballots from others.
00:27And so we have different rules about who can register and who can't from state to state.
00:32And it's really not one America when it comes to voting.
00:36There are cracks in our democracy.
00:39In fact, the way that elections are run is dysfunctional.
00:44Electoral dysfunction
00:49Where's the pill for this affliction?
00:56I'm Moraka American.
00:59And as an American, I'm proud that I have the right to vote.
01:03Or do I?
01:04For answers, I consulted the Constitution.
01:07This is the wrong copy, I think.
01:09No, no.
01:10This is the copy.
01:11No, this is the Constitution.
01:12This is the Constitution.
01:13Yeah.
01:14A close reading of the Constitution didn't turn up anything about the right to vote.
01:18There is no right to vote in the Constitution.
01:20You're not kidding me.
01:22No, I'm not kidding you.
01:24The Constitution at the nation's birth made no mention of voting rights whatsoever.
01:32Did they just forget to?
01:33No, they didn't forget to.
01:35They were unsure, in fact, whether voting was a right or a privilege.
01:41And if it was a right, they weren't sure who the right actually belonged to.
01:46And in fact, if you look closely at the Constitution, the only office that they refer to as being elected is for the House of Representatives.
01:53This constitutional silence on the right to vote puts the U.S. in some interesting company, including Chechnya, Libya, and Iran.
02:06What we have is a kind of ragtag series of ad hoc constitutional amendments that say you can't discriminate on the basis of race.
02:13You can't discriminate on the basis of sex.
02:15But other than these kind of anti-discrimination amendments, we don't have the affirmative universal right to vote like you find in the South Africa Constitution,
02:22which just simply says everybody's got a right to vote.
02:24That's what it means to have a democracy.
02:25That's what we the people really means.
02:27Because the drafters of the Constitution left control of voting to the states, we've ended up with a wildly decentralized voting system.
02:36So for example, while in Vermont, people convicted of felonies can vote from the comfort of their prison cells.
02:42It's a very different story in Mississippi.
02:45A Canton man convicted of voter fraud is given the maximum sentence.
02:50Terrence Watts will serve 10 years in prison for voting illegally twice.
02:54After serving time for a felony, Watts, who was still on the registration rolls, broke the law by merely voting in two separate elections.
03:03He's scheduled for release in 2020.
03:07It's outrageous.
03:08Florida has about 900,000 people with felony convictions who cannot vote.
03:13We really need to be in a place where you've done your time, you just get your rights back.
03:18Would a constitutional right to vote help clear up this mess?
03:23Well, an amendment to do just that has been stalled in Congress since 2001.
03:29Maybe by the time Terrence Watts gets out of prison, every American will be guaranteed the right to vote.
03:35From sea to shining sea.
03:59We're also going to vote now against the right to vote.
04:00You have to pay a permit resign for the suppression.
04:05If you have been railing in 위ase and recognize you can get your plans to travel, Noah Teoh, bangnut off your nogallity of others.
04:11And if you've seen the news and sent, you don't take property or hang.
04:16Please refer a bit.
04:19And if you want to review in the release of a pottery, a big hurtfulொ look.
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