{"id":44041,"date":"2018-11-28T12:41:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T17:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=44041"},"modified":"2023-08-03T15:19:09","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T19:19:09","slug":"genealogy-101-voting-records-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/genealogy-101-voting-records-part-ii.html","title":{"rendered":"Genealogy 101: Voting Records, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/em><\/strong>: In this article \u2013 part of an ongoing \u201cIntroduction to Genealogy\u201d series \u2013 Gena Philibert-Ortega explains why you may not find your ancestor in voting records. Gena is a genealogist and author of the book \u201cFrom the Family Kitchen.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Voting registrations are a great source for documenting an ancestor\u2019s location at a specific time (see Genealogy 101: Voting Records<\/a>). But \u2013 unlike the census \u2013 they are not a complete list of a location\u2019s population. Not everyone voted, either by choice or because of disenfranchisement. Knowing the history of why an ancestor couldn\u2019t vote and when they could can be the key to finding them in the available voting records.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s explore some of the reasons your ancestor may not have voted.<\/p>\n

Poll Taxes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Poll taxes were a revenue generator for the United States government, beginning with the original colonies. A poll tax is a fixed sum that every person must pay \u2013 and, in some states, paying the poll tax was a prerequisite before you were allowed to vote. After the Civil War, poll taxes were used in an effort to stop newly franchised African American men from voting \u2013 along with literacy tests, intimidation, and assaults. The implementation of poll taxes helped to ensure that poor men and women were not able to vote.<\/p>\n

This 1920 Louisiana newspaper article leaves little doubt that the poll tax was a way to stop people of color from voting. Voters are reminded that if they do not pay their poll tax, they will not be eligible to vote for the next two years. The article ends with the racist admonition to not be a \u201csquaw man,\u201d which refers to a white man married to a Native American woman.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
State Times Advocate (Baton Rouge, Louisiana), 22 December 1920, page 12<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In some cases, poll tax records, along with other tax records, can be found by searching the FamilySearch Catalog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s Suffrage<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s well known that American women fought for and received the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, but it\u2019s important to know that women in some states voted decades prior to 1920 in state and local elections. As this 1879 Massachusetts newspaper article details, women in that state were eligible to vote in school committee elections. The names of the women who registered to vote appear in this newspaper article.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Lowell Daily Citizen and News (Lowell, Massachusetts), 13 November 1879, page 3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Loss of Citizenship<\/strong><\/p>\n

The idea that citizenship is a qualification for voting is a more recent one. Non-citizens have not been allowed to vote in federal elections since 1996, and states had outlawed the practice by the late 1920s.* Prior to that, some states did allow non-citizens to vote. However, it\u2019s possible that your American-born ancestor didn\u2019t vote because they had lost their citizenship. In the early 20th century, men who wanted to serve during World War I \u2013 prior to the U.S. entrance into the war \u2013 joined our allies in the fight. That act of joining another country\u2019s military (even an ally) meant that, whether the individual man realized it or not, he lost his citizenship.<\/p>\n

Another example of Americans losing their citizenship is when American women in the early 1900s married men who were not U.S. citizens. Women\u2019s citizenship was considered derivative and based on the citizenship of their father or husband. The law was changed in 1922, but women whom it affected could not vote until they applied for citizenship or later took an oath of allegiance reinstating their citizenship. That\u2019s not to say that some of them didn\u2019t vote anyway, not knowing they had lost their citizenship, but it could be a reason for them not voting.<\/p>\n

\"An
Morning Olympian (Olympia, Washington), 26 December 1940, page 4<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not Everyone Voted, but It\u2019s Still Important to Look for Voting Records<\/strong><\/p>\n

Voting records are a great source for documenting where a person was at a specific place in time, but it\u2019s important to remember that not everyone is documented in these records. Reasons for not finding an ancestor in voting records can stem from a historical event \u2013 or they simply didn\u2019t bother to exercise their right to vote. Use voting records as one more place to look for your ancestor, but make sure that you don\u2019t make assumptions about their absence from those records.<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

* \u201cRight of foreigners to vote in the United States,\u201d Wikipedia (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Right_of_foreigners_to_vote_in_the_United_States<\/a>: accessed 2 November 2018).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this article, Gena Philibert-Ortega explains why you may not find your ancestor in voting records.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":44063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12713],"tags":[12,2719,37147],"class_list":["post-44041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-genealogy","tag-genealogy-search-tips","tag-voting-records"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/photo-1018-2016-featured-graphic-classroom-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44041"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93591,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44041\/revisions\/93591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}