Page:Democratic Ideals (Olympia Brown).djvu/62

Rh the right to vote for members of Congress is fundamentally based upon the constitution of the United States, which created the office, if it can be called an office, and declares the manner in which it shall be filled. The importance of this last declaration by the Supreme Court cannot be over-estimated. It places the right to vote for members of Congress on its only true foundation, that of the constitution of the United States, and is an assertion of national power and dignity; and the next declaration by the Court is no less important, that 'the States, in prescribing the qualifications of voters for the most numerous branch of their own Legislatures,do not do this with reference to the election of members of Congress. Nor can they prescribe the qualifications for voters for those eo nomine. So that when the states impose upon their own citizens a qualification, that of sex, with which one-half of them cannot comply, it has no reference to the federal elector, who is not bound thereby, nor can his or her right of federal suffrage be defeated by such an artifice. Thus an impediment, heretofore supposed to be ineluctable, is removed by this decision.

"The right of federal suffrage is not based upon sex. It inheres in the status or condition of federal citizenship. Men do not vote for members of Congress by reason of their sex, or because they are men, but because