This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, June 10th, 2014. I'm Caleb Brown.

The right to vote is a fundamental right. So under what circumstances can the government create

hurdles to the free exercise of voting rights. Bob Levy is chairman of the Cato Institute.

We discussed voting rights last week.

It's actually a more complicated question than you think.

Under the original Constitution, we had a right to vote, individuals had a right to vote for the

House of Representatives.

But we didn't have a right to vote for Senators.

That was added by the 17th Amendment in 1913. Up until that time

U.S. Senators were elected by state legislatures. And interestingly and a lot of

people don't realize this. There is no federal right in the Constitution for individuals to vote for president.

But the states can confer such a right. The states are empowered by Article 2 of the US Constitution to decide how the President's

going to be elected.

And the states, of course, have conferred such a right on individuals.

And then the court has held most recently in Bush versus Gore that when the state gives the right to vote for president in the people as all the

states have done then the right to vote is considered a fundamental right and that's very important when it comes to

determining whether or not there has been discrimination in the application of

voting rights.

The Constitution added discrimination protections

after the Civil War, beginning with the 15th Amendment

in 1870, which of course gave the right to vote to black persons.

The 19th Amendment added women.

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