While the privilege to vote may not be abridged by a state on
account of race, color and previous condition of servitude, the
privilege is not given by the federal Constitution or by any of its
amendments, nor is it a privilege springing from citizenship of the
United States.
Minor v.
Happersett, 21 Wall. 162.
While the right to vote for members of Congress is not derived
exclusively from the law of the state in which they are chosen, but
has its foundation in the Constitution and laws of the United
States, the elector must be one entitled to vote under the state
statute.
An act of the legislature of a state providing that all persons
who shall thereafter remove into the state from any other state,
district or territory shall make declaration of their intent to
become citizens and residents of the state a year before they have
the right to be registered as voters is not violative of the
federal Constitution as against a citizen of another state moving
into the enacting state after the passage of the act.
This is a writ of error to the Court of Appeals of the State of
Maryland to review its judgment affirming that of the Circuit Court
for Montgomery County, which affirmed the proceedings of the Board
of Registry of Election District No. 7 of that county
Page 193 U. S. 622
refusing to register petitioner as a legal voter on the ground
of his noncompliance with the Maryland law making it necessary for
a person coming into the state, with the intention of residing
therein, to register his name with the clerk of the circuit court
of the proper county, and thereby to indicate the intent of such
person to become a citizen and resident of the state.
The act in question was passed March 29, 1902, as chapter 133 of
the laws of that year, and as an amendment and supplement to the
Public General Laws of the state, title Elections, subtitle
Registration, as § 25B, and it is reproduced in the margin.
*
Plaintiff in error on September 29, 1903, presented his
application
Page 193 U. S. 623
to the Board of Registry of Election District No. 7, Montgomery
County, Maryland, then sitting at a place within such district, to
be registered and entered as a qualified voter on the registry of
voters of that election district, which application the board
refused and declined to comply with for the sole reason that he had
not complied with this law of Maryland. Thereafter the plaintiff
presented a sworn petition to the Circuit Court for Montgomery
County, in the State of Maryland, praying that court to enter an
order to revise the action of the board of registry, and to order
and direct that the name of the petitioner should be entered as a
qualified voter on the registry of voters of the election district
already named. In that sworn petition, he alleged that he had, on
June 7, 1902, with his wife and child, removed from the City of
Washington, District of Columbia, into Montgomery County, in the
State of Maryland,
"having then had, and ever since and now having, the intention
of making the State of Maryland the permanent domicil of himself
and his family, and of becoming a citizen of said state, and ever
since said June 7, 1902, petitioner has resided in the subdivision
of Otterbourne, near Chevy Chase, in said Montgomery County, and in
the seventh election district of said county."
The petitioner further showed in his petition that he had made
application to the proper board of registry in the election
district mentioned, and the board had refused to enter his name as
a qualified voter on the ground already stated, of noncompliance
with the Maryland statute.
The petitioner admitted
"that he did not, within a year prior to said application for
registration as a qualified voter, or at any time during the year
1902, in any manner make or register, in the office of or before
the Clerk of Montgomery County, Maryland, or in a record book kept
by said clerk, a declaration of intention to become a citizen and
resident of Maryland, such as is required by the aforesaid law to
be made by persons who remove into the State of Maryland after
March 29, 1902, as a condition precedent to subsequent
registration
Page 193 U. S. 624
of such persons as qualified voters. Petitioner, however, claims
and asserts that said section 25B of article 33 of the Code of
Public General Laws of Maryland affords no justification for said
refusal to register your petitioner as a qualified voter, because
said alleged law contravenes and is repugnant to the Constitution
of the United States and the Constitution of Maryland, and is
therefore null and void."
The petitioner then asserts and sets forth in his petition
several grounds which, as he therein alleges, render the state law
a violation of the Constitution of the Maryland, and he also
specially sets up and claims that the law is a violation of the
Constitution of the United States in the particulars named by him,
and which are as follows:
"Said law is repugnant to that portion of section 1 of the
Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States which
declares that, 'all persons born or naturalized in the United
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of
the United States and of the state wherein they reside,' because by
said law it is in effect ordained that male citizens of the United
States of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, removing into
the State of Maryland after March 29, 1902, with the intention of
making said state their permanent domicil, shall not be treated as
citizens or residents of Maryland, or given the rights and
privileges of citizens of Maryland, until they have been
naturalized in the mode prescribed by said law."
"Said law is also repugnant to that portion of section 1 of said
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which
prohibits a state from denying any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws, because said law operates an
unjust and unreasonable discrimination against citizens of the
United States coming into the State of Maryland to permanently
reside therein after March 29, 1902, who may desire to become
qualified voters therein."
"Said law is also repugnant to the general spirit of the
Constitution of the United States and the fundamental rights
Page 193 U. S. 625
of citizens of the United States, which deny to a state the
power to attach unreasonable or burdensome conditions to the free
movement of citizens of the United States out of, into, and
settlement within, the confines of any state, district, or
territory within the United States."
To this petition there was a general demurrer, which was
sustained by the court, which thereupon entered judgment dismissing
the petition, with costs to the defendants.
Page 193 U. S. 631
MR. JUSTICE PECKHAM, after making the above statement of facts,
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is not a case of a statute of the state having been passed
subsequently to the time when the individual had removed from
another state or from a territory or from the District of Columbia
into the State of Maryland. There is therefore no alteration of any
possible rights which the plaintiff in error might have already
acquired and which he might claim were taken from him by the
passage of such statute. On the contrary, this statute took effect
on March 29, 1902, more than two months prior to the removal of the
plaintiff in error from Washington in the District of Columbia to
Montgomery County, within the State of Maryland. The objections of
a federal nature which are made by the plaintiff in error to the
validity of the statute are set out in his petition, and are
Page 193 U. S. 632
also contained in the above statement of facts, and are
substantially reproduced in his assignment of errors.
We are of opinion that the statute does not violate any federal
right of the plaintiff in error which he seeks to assert in this
proceeding. The statute, so far as it concerns him and the right
which he urges, is one making regulations and conditions for the
registry of persons for the purpose of voting. It was only for the
purpose of thereafter voting that the plaintiff in error sought to
be registered, and it was the denial of that right only which he
can now review. His application for registry as a voter was denied
by the board of registry solely because of his failure to comply
with the statute. Whatever other right he may have as a citizen of
Maryland by reason of his removal there with an intent to become
such citizen is not now in question. So far as appears no other
right, if any he may have, has been infringed by the statute. The
simple matter to be herein determined is whether, with reference to
the exercise of the privilege of voting in Maryland, the
legislature of that state had the legal right to provide that a
person coming into the state to reside should make the declaration
of intent a year before he should have the right to be registered
as a voter of the state.
The privilege to vote in any state is not given by the federal
Constitution, or by any of its amendments. It is not a privilege
springing from citizenship of the
United
States. Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162. It may
not be refused on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude, but it does not follow from mere citizenship of the
United States. In other words, the privilege to vote in a state is
within the jurisdiction of the state itself, to be exercised as the
state may direct, and upon such terms as to it may seem proper,
provided, of course, no discrimination is made between individuals,
in violation of the federal Constitution. The state might provide
that persons of foreign birth could vote without being naturalized,
and, as stated by Mr. Chief Justice Waite in
Miner v.
Happersett, supra, such persons were allowed to vote in
several of the
Page 193 U. S. 633
states upon having declared their intentions to become citizens
of the United States. Some states permit women to vote; others
refuse them that privilege. A state, so far as the federal
Constitution is concerned, might provide by its own constitution
and laws that none but native-born citizens should be permitted to
vote, as the federal Constitution does not confer the right of
suffrage upon any one, and the conditions under which that right is
to be exercised are matters for the states alone to prescribe,
subject to the conditions of the federal Constitution already
stated. although it may be observed that the right to vote for a
member of Congress is not derived exclusively from the state law.
See Federal Constitution, Art. I, Section 2;
Wiley v.
Sinkler, 179 U. S. 58. But
the elector must be one entitled to vote under the state statute.
(
Id.)
See also Swafford v. Templeton,
185 U. S. 487,
185 U. S. 491.
In this case, no question arises as to the right to vote for
electors of President and Vice President, and no decision is made
thereon. The question whether the conditions prescribed by the
state might be regarded by others as reasonable or unreasonable is
not a federal one. We do not wish to be understood, however, as
intimating that the condition in this statute is unreasonable or in
any way improper.
We are unable to see any violation of the federal Constitution
in the provision of the state statute for the declaration of the
intent of a person coming into the state before he can claim the
right to be registered as a voter. The statute, so far as it
provides conditions precedent to the exercise of the elective
franchise within the state, by persons coming therein to reside
(and that is as far as it is necessary to consider it in this
case), is neither an unlawful discrimination against any one in the
situation of the plaintiff in error nor does it deny to him the
equal protection of the laws, nor is it repugnant to any
fundamental or inalienable rights of citizens of the United States,
nor a violation of any implied guaranties of the federal
Constitution. The right of a state to legislate upon the subject of
the elective franchise as to it may seem good, subject
Page 193 U. S. 634
to the conditions already stated, being, as we believe,
unassailable, we think it plain that the statute in question
violates no right protected by the federal Constitution.
The reasons which may have impelled the state legislature to
enact the statute in question were matters entirely for its
consideration, and this Court has no concern with them.
It is unnecessary in this case to assert that under no
conceivable state of facts could a state statute in regard to
voting be regarded as an infringement upon or a discrimination
against, the individual rights of a citizen of the United States
removing into the state, and excluded from voting therein by state
legislation. The question might arise if an exclusion from the
privilege of voting were founded upon the particular state from
which the person came, excluding from that privilege, for instance,
a citizen of the United States coming from Georgia and allowing it
to a citizen of the United States coming from New York or any other
state. In such case, an argument might be urged that, under the
Fourteenth Amendment of the federal Constitution, the citizen from
Georgia was, by the state statute, deprived of the equal protection
of the laws. Other extreme cases might be suggested. We neither
assert nor deny that, in the case supposed, the claim would be well
founded that a federal right of a citizen of the United States was
violated by such legislation, for the question does not arise
herein. We do, however, hold that there is nothing in the statute
in question which violated the federal rights of the plaintiff in
error by virtue of the provision for making a declaration of his
intention to become a citizen before he can have the right to be
registered as a voter and to vote in the state.
The plaintiff in error has no ground for complaint in regard to
the decision of the courts below, and the judgment of the Court of
Appeals of Maryland is therefore
Affirmed.
*
"SEC. 25B. All persons who, after the passage of this act, shall
remove into any county of this state or into the City of Baltimore
from any other state, district, or territory, shall indicate their
intent to become citizens and residents of this state by
registering their names in a suitable record book, to be procured
and kept for the purpose by the clerk of the circuit court for the
several counties, and by the clerk of the Superior Court of
Baltimore City; such record to contain their names, residence, age,
and occupation, and the intent of such persons to become citizens
and residents of this state shall date from the day on which such
registry shall be so entered in such record book by the clerk of
the circuit court for the county, or of the superior court of
Baltimore City, as the case may be, into which county or city such
person shall so remove from any other state, district, or
territory. And no person coming into this state from any other
state, district, or territory shall be entitled to registration as
a legal voter of this state until one year after his intent to
become such legal voter shall be thus evidenced by such entry in
such record book, and such entry or a duly certified copy thereof
shall be the only competent and admissible evidence of such intent.
And the clerk of the Superior Court of Baltimore City and of the
several courts of the several counties shall immediately, upon the
passage of this act, procure a suitable record book for the
recording therein of such entries, arranged alphabetically under
the names of such persons. For every person so registered under the
provisions of this section they shall be entitled to demand and
receive the sum of twenty-five cents, to be paid to said clerks by
the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore and the county
commissioners, respectively. A copy of such record, duly certified
by said clerk, shall be evidence of the right of such person to
registration as legal voters according to law, and each person so
registered shall be entitled to such certified copy upon demand,
without charge."
