Voting for Welfare

For over a century, the Supreme Court has characterized the franchise as instrumental-a right that is preservative of all other rights. Statistics confirm that federal protection of the right to vote has produced higher levels of minority electoral participation and greater shares of minority politicians over the past half century. To voting rights advocates, indicators of progress in the electoral arena justify continued franchise protections to preserve or expand on these gains. Opponents use the same numbers to argue that aggressive political protections are no longer necessary. Largely absent from this discussion, though, is evidence of whether the right to vote, as the primary formal tool for democratic accountability, can and should be viewed as a tool that can actually shift policy toward improving the welfare of minority citizens and communities.