Good day,
citizens and welcome to What Would 
Jefferson Do?,
our weekly opportunity to discuss 
current American events with President 
Thomas Jefferson,
who is seated across from me now.
Good Day to you,
Mr Jefferson.
Good day to you,
citizen.
I would like to talk to you sir this 
week about voting.
It's the season for that and I thought 
perhaps you could share what it was like
during your time,
sir.
Well,
much different in my time than in yours.
The voting was done in public.
Ballots were usually not secret.
In fact,
there usually were two ballot boxes,
one for candidate a and one for 
candidate b.
These votes usually took place on a 
green or a town square or some other 
park and people would have picnics and 
there would be festivals and parades and
vans and fireworks and so on.
I have to say there was a fair amount of
drinking involved in these things.
And then at a certain point the local 
justice of the peace or the sheriff 
would say,
line up to vote.
How do you vote citizen?
And the person would come up and put his
ballot,
his vote into a box,
into a slot in a box,
and everyone in that public place would 
know which candidate he voted for.
So there was not the same anonymity that
we have in your time.
Americans nowadays have a tendency to 
just think,
well,
everyone has the right to vote,
but that's not necessarily true during 
your time
Let me say who didn't vote in my time.
American Indians didn't vote because 
they were part of other sovereign 
nations,
just as if they had been French or 
Portuguese.
Women didn't vote;
briefly,
they voted in New Jersey after the war,
but that was then rescinded.
But women were thought in my time to be 
subordinate to the males in their life.
And so they didn't vote.
Most black people didn't vote,
a handful did,
who were free black citizens in northern
states,
but no slave voted ever.
And so even amongst the white men,
the group that was more central to the 
franchise in my time,
most of them were not able to vote 
because there were some severe property 
qualifications in most states.
You had to have x acres of property or x
thousands of dollars of net wealth in 
order to qualify to vote.
So on any given election,
let's say the election of 1800,
which I was elected by the American 
people to replace John Adams as 
president,
probably no more than 10 or 12 percent 
of the American people voted,
and that might just be 10 or 12 percent 
of the white males in the United States.
Most Americans,
and I guess I should say most idealistic
Americans,
believe that every citizen should have 
the right to vote.
I certainly do,
sir.
And I encourage people to vote,
but in our most recent election,
there's been impediments put up that 
seem to favor certain citizens votes 
over others.
How would you react to that,
sir?
It it all depends on what you mean by 
citizens.
In my time citizen meant a white man.
It did not mean an American Indian,
did not mean a slave,
or in most cases,
a former slave.
So once you've decided what the embrace 
of the social contract is,
who's really regarded as a citizen in 
your culture,
then my view is that every one of them 
should have the capacity.
You're not going to match my idealism 
then Mr Jefferson?
I'm certainly believing that,
that we should expand the franchise and 
in my time I was a radical.
I said we should not have property 
qualifications for voting amongst white 
men and if we needed them,
if that was some sort of sign of 
stability then we should grant 50 acres 
of land in the West to every 
property-less man,
so that he would then become a citizen 
and an elector.
You not only match my idealism,
sir,
you supersede it.
Well,
not really because we did not certainly 
believe that women or people of color 
were citizens of the United States in 
the full sense of the term.
And that would,
I think,
in your era,
brand us as pretty narrowly focused.
Well,
I would,
I would anticipate that we could both 
agree that the right to vote is one of 
the most important of citizens' rights.
And in fact,
in my estimation,
a duty sir.
When are we citizens?
We're citizens when we vote every second
year or how often;
we're citizens when we pay our taxes,
that's an important civic duty.
We're citizens when we're called to jury
duty or other public responsibilities,
and we're citizens when we go to war and
we are asked to join as volunteers or 
sometimes conscripted into our armed 
forces.
That's the sort of array of citizenship 
responsibilities,
but the primary one,
the one that is most obvious,
important,
and automatic is the right to vote.
Thank you very much,
Mr Jefferson.
You are welcome,
sir.
