During the early 1800s, the property requirement was lifted as the government became obligated to offer suffrage to veterans fighting for the United States. By the mid-1800s, one had to be a white male in order to vote, but did not need to own property.

African-American Suffrage
The early Women's Suffrage Movement and the Abolitionist Movement merged in order to achieve their common aims. However, after the Civil War, it soon became clear that while voting would be opened to all men, regardless of color, it would still be denied to women. The Fifteenth Amendment, passed in 1870, provided universal male suffrage. However, voting rights would soon be denied to African-American men.

After Reconstruction ended in 1876, voting rights were denied to African-American men through a variety of means, including the poll tax, literacy tests, and grandfather clause:

African-Americans were often uniformed or misled as to the date that poll taxes were due, thereby disqualifying their vote. The literacy tests administered to African-Americans were often much more difficult than those given to poor whites, causing them to fail. Since most freedmen had only been recently freed from slavery, their grandfather had definitely been slaves, making it impossible for them to meet the grandfather clauses enacted in many states. Thus, African-Americans were disenfranchised until the modern Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Civil Rights Movement renewed the struggle for African-American voting rights, resulting in the passage of a series of federal laws and an amendment to the Constitution:

Today, the African-American vote accounts for a large percentage of the electorate. Politicians carefully plan their election strategies and support for legislation and programs based on the needs of this group.

Women's Suffrage
The struggle for women's suffrage dates back to the early 1800s. By the mid-1800s, women had become organized under the leadership of women such as Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony.

In 1848, suffragists organized the Seneca Falls Convention in upstate New York. There, Stanton composed the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments which was modeled after the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Rights and Sentiments contained several resolutions including that a man should not withhold a woman's rights, take her property or refuse to allow her to vote.

Suffragists were greatly disappointed to learn that women were excluded from the Fifteenth Amendment that granted all men the right to vote. However, they continued to protest, march, and organize in the hope that they would soon be able to legally vote.

Finally in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment was passed which provided women with the right to vote.

Vietnam Conflict
Protest against the Vietnam Conflict also led to suffrage reform. At the time, eighteen-year olds were being drafted to fight by the United States in Vietnam. Many protestors pointed out that while these young men could be drafted, they were not eligible to vote until they had reached the age of twenty-one. The inequity was realized because these soldiers could not vote for a policy they were being forced to carry out, at risk of their own lives.

Subsequently, the Twenty-sixth Amendment was passed making the minimum voting age the same as the draft age of eighteen.