A.A. Denny Challenges Ambiguous Indigenous Voting Law
A territorial legislator objected to unclear rules for Indigenous enfranchisement, warning that local election judges would decide voter eligibility inconsistently.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
I am perfectly willing to be considered as opposed to half-breed Indians being allowed to vote as a class, but I must ever insist that the law should so distinctly set forth who ought to vote, or to make the distinction so clearly between those half-breeds whom virtue and intelligence qualify to vote, and those whose rank is the same by blood but so degraded that they are not above the unlettered savage, that judges of election can have no difficulty in deciding whether they are legal voters or not. Under this clause, the question is left to a different board of judges in every precinct throughout the Territory as to who have adopted the habits and customs of civilized life and who have not.
“Guard the ballot box as the palladium of our liberties.”
A.A. Denny's 1854 letter captures a pivotal and discriminatory moment in Washington's early political history, illustrating how local election officials used ambiguous definitions of 'civilization' to restrict access to the ballot for Indigenous people.
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