As much as most Americans want to deny it, the history of the United States was seldom democratic at all. Even though the current system closely resembles the Roman Republican system of government, the first few centuries of existence for the United States hardly represented a majority of the population. In the same way as Athens in the fifth century, the United States restricted voting to white males for nearly a century and women for another fifty years after that.
Until very recently, the United States electorate was very similar to the Athenian system. In ancient Athens, only free males with citizenship could vote[1], much like the initial voting rights granted in the U.S. Constitution. Although the United States’ political system has evolved dramatically over the past four centuries, it is important to realize the roots of the system were inherently unequal and served to represent the few, rather than the many. In the same way, the restriction of voting rights to male citizens in Athens restricted political positions to this population of people, effectively establishing an oligarchy containing all of the power.
Some of the founding principles of the United States, as found in the Declaration of Independence, are that “all Men are created equal…[and] governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”[2] However, no matter how hard we try to believe that, this was simply not true in the U.S. with the electorate and politicians until very recently. Much like the Athenian system, white, landowning males were the predominant force within government and the political system in the United States. That remained the case in the United States until 1870 when the Fifteenth Amendment of the constitution granted voting rights to African-American men.[3] Similarly, the right to vote for women deferred even further until 1920, with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.[4] Based off the 242 year history of the United States and the reality that women have not even been able to vote for one hundred of those years exposes the historic inequality of the system.
There is no denying the deep-rooted similarities between the United States and Ancient Athens concerning voting rights and representation in government. At the core, the systems are inherently identical, and severely restricted those who could actually participate in these so-called free systems of government. Thankfully, the United States was able to mend the shortcomings of the Athenian system, and currently offers no restrictions in voting practices. However, without Athens, it is unclear whether the practices of voting and representative politics in the U.S. would even exist.
-Griffin Hamilton
Word Count: 454
[1] Aristotle. Athenian Constitution, Section 2, Part 42
[2] Declaration of Independence, 1776
[3] United States Constitution, Amendment 15, 1870
[4] United States Constitution, Amendment 19, 1920
The West in the Pre-Modern World 