<x-flowed>         As the historian of the disfranchisement of blacks and poor whites in the late nineteenth century South, and one who's studied Anglo-American suffrage somewhat more generally, I hear lots of earlier echoes in the thread that started with Rick's quotation of Goldberg's op-ed in the LA Times.
        I began my 80,000-word entry on "Suffrage" in The Encyclopedia of American Political History, which is available on my home page, to which there is a link below, by quoting the preamble to the English act of 1430 that established the 40s freeholder provision, the first well-known restricting of the suffrage in Anglo-American law.  The nation, the preamble said, had been disturbed by the riotous behavior of "very great, outrageous and excessive number[s] of people, of which [the] most was [sic] people of small substance and of no value, whereof every [one] of them pretended a voice equivalent as to such election with the most worthy knights and esquires."
        As a little reflection on the statement might suggest, what the "worthy knights and esquires" were concerned to restrict was not ignorant voters, but those whose interests and actions ran counter to theirs.  Similar sentiments were expressed by southern disfranchisers, not only about African-Americans, whom they claimed to consider racially incapable of exercising political judgment, but whom they really objected to because blacks were too independent of white Democratic bosses, but also about poor whites, especially those with the temerity to vote Republican, Populist, or "independent."  In the late 19th century North, intellectuals such as the historian Francis Parkman said much the same thing about lower-class, especially Catholic and Irish immigrants.  The people who actually passed laws in the North and South -- e.g., literacy tests and registration requirements -- were less ethereal than Parkman and only mouthed such slogans to shield their political self-interest.  (For a much more sustained version of this argument for the South, see my 1974 book, The Shaping of Southern Politics.)   The liquor interests who believed that women would vote for prohibition made equally abstract and quite parallel arguments against woman suffrage -- with much the same self-interest only lightly obscured.
        The people on the election law list, and even Mr. Goldberg, are surely in Parkman's class.  They, themselves, presumably have only the most tangential self-interest in felon voting.  But it's worthwhile noting that those who actually pass and administer the laws are less easily exonerated of suspect motives.  Katherine Harris, are your ears burning?  This debate has been around a long time and hasn't changed much over the years.  We might learn a bit by looking at what our forefathers (and some foremothers) said and did.
Morgan

Prof. of History and Social Science, Caltech
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          "Peace if possible, Justice at any rate" -- Wendell Phillips

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