There is a long tradition in this country of denying adults the right to vote for various reasons. Most of us have a direct connection to a group of people who at some point were not allowed to vote, whether based on race, sex, immigration status, or social standing.
The original Bill of Rights, for example, did not explicitly include the right to vote—since most adults could not vote. The notion that wealth conferred the right to vote on the minority of people who were wealthy was central to the original concept of our democracy. But over time, voting rights have alternately expanded and contracted, with an overall trend of allowing more and more adults the right to vote.
1787 - Pre-Civil War The population of the country was growing (and the number of states) but voting rights were contracting more than expanding. By the 1860’s there was a patchwork of reasons that one might be denied the right to vote, including laws denying immigrants the right to vote, poll taxes (requiring payment of a fee to vote), exclusions for women, and literacy rules. By 1855, 25 of the 31 states had race-based exclusions that made clear that only Whites could vote. A number of states also had some sort of exclusion for people with criminal convictions, but many of these exclusions were based on election-related crimes, treason, or dueling. In a small number of states, there were blanket exclusions for convictions of “infamous” crimes (what we would now call felonies), based on a belief that these voters lacked integrity and might corrupt the democratic process. Many states also had bans on white men who were “paupers” (poor) from voting.
1860’s – Early 20th century The U.S. Civil War ended the existing legal framework for slavery and opened up potential for rethinking civic participation. Liberation of former slaves was fought at every turn by former slaveholders, forcing the federal government to formalize certain rights in the Constitution, including voting rights. In 1870 the states ratified the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing that no one would be denied the right to vote based on race or a previous state of servitude. This was followed by decades of states adding voting rights exclusions for crimes of any type that involved imprisonment, or a conviction for any “infamous” crimes (felonies), and subsequently convicting Blacks of those crimes. Women gained the right to vote and various court cases pushed against the voting barriers such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and property requirements. However, some states were entering the union with felony exclusions in effect (including Washington state).
1950’s – 2000 Overall voting rights expanded in the second half of the 20thth century, especially during the 1950’s and 1960’s. People were able to remove statutory barriers imposed on African-Americans, and these gains were enforced by the courts. Some of these exclusions, rather than being obvious race-based restrictions, involved fees called “poll taxes” that people were required to pay in order to vote. But then the 24 Amendment was passed, eliminating poll taxes, followed by one final legal challenge, Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, that put poll taxes to rest for good. The concept that people should have to be able to pay to vote was declared thoroughly unconstitutional. In less than 200 years, the original premise that wealth was a primary requirement for voting rights had become an archaic notion.
Source: The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, by Alexander Keyssar