People who defend the morally decrepit, wealthy, white founding generation will justify the exclusion of a right to vote from the Constitution as an example of “federalism”—the American idea that rights flow up from the disparate states instead of down from a centralized federal government. In this view, voting rights are conferred by state governments, not the federal one. Defenders of federalism believe that the states—which they sometimes call the “incubators of democracy”—are best positioned to decide who gets to vote.
