Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/12pdf/12-71_7l48.pdf
Page Number: 29.0

Cite as:  570 U. S. ____ (2013) 

5 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

Sixth  Amendments,  which  are  not  at  issue  here.    This 
power is instead expressly reposed in the States. 

1 
The  history  of  the  Voter  Qualifications  Clause’s  enact-
ment confirms this conclusion.  The Framers did not intend 
to  leave  voter  qualifications  to  Congress.  Indeed,  James 
Madison explicitly rejected that possibility: 

“The  definition  of  the  right  of  suffrage  is  very  justly
regarded as a fundamental article of republican govern- 
ment.  It was incumbent on the convention, therefore, 
to  define  and  establish  this  right  in  the  Constitu- 
tion.  To have left it open for the occasional regulation 
of the Congress would have been improper.”  The Fed-
eralist No. 52, at 323 (emphasis added). 

Congressional  legislation  of  voter  qualifications  was  not 
part of the Framers’ design. 

The Constitutional Convention did recognize a danger in
leaving  Congress  “too  dependent  on  the  State  govern-
ments”  by  allowing  States  to  define  congressional  elector 
qualifications  without  limitation.  Ibid.    To  address  this  
concern, the Committee of Detail that drafted Article I, §2, 
“weighed the possibility of a federal property requirement, 
as  well  as  several  proposals  that  would  have  given  the 
federal  government  the  power  to  impose  its  own  suffrage
laws at some future time.”  A. Keyssar, The Right to Vote 
18 (rev. ed. 2009) (hereafter Keyssar); see also 2 The Rec-
ords of the Federal Convention of 1787, pp. 139–140, 151,
153,  163–165  (M.  Farrand  rev.  ed.  1966)  (text  of  several
voter qualification provisions considered by the Committee 
of Detail).

These efforts, however, were ultimately abandoned.  Even 
if  the  convention  had  been  able  to  agree  on  a  uniform
federal standard, the Framers knew that state ratification 
conventions  likely  would  have  rejected  it.    Madison  ex-