Does the Constitution Guarantee a Right to Vote?
Article XV of the Constitution of the United States, Section 1, provides that “all legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States…”
A:
As to the first part of your question, it would take a lot of digging to find out where the phrase “all legislative powers herein granted to Congress” comes from. I was able to locate a version of Article XV that has no such text. However, I did find a document from the Committee of the Whole, a short time after the adoption of the Constitution that contains language identical to the present. This is the Committee of the Whole Record:
SENATE JOURNAL, A. R. S. No. 24. CONSTITUTION CONVENTION, AT NEW-YORK, NOV. 22, 1789, REPORT OF MONDAY, DAY 6, BY J. C. TAYLOR, SPEAKER.
This is a draft, rather than a statute as it would be today. It is interesting that the document does not mention voting, and does not contain the word “voter.” The second part of your question involves the rights of a national electorate, or “electors,” or citizens. The term is first found in Article II, Section 2, where the Constitution lists the “electors, to be appointed in proportion to the inhabitants of each State.” Since this is the first amendment to the Constitution, it is interesting that it does not require that an elector be given a vote. It is clear, though, that one must be given a vote and pay a fee to vote:
SENATE JOURNAL, A. R. S. No. 33. CONSTITUTION CONVENTION, AT NEW-YORK, NOV. 22, 1789,