It says:
"Laws may be passed excluding from the right of suffrage all
persons who have been or may be convicted of bribery, larceny or
any infamous crime."
In naming the various employments that shall not affect the residence of
voters--the 3d section of article 2d says "that being kept at any alms
house, or other asylum, at public expense, nor being confined at any
public prison, shall deprive a person of his residence," and hence his
vote. Thus is the right of voting most sacredly hedged about. The only
seeming permission in the New York State Constitution for the
disfranchisement of women is in section 1st of article 2d, which says:
"Every male citizen of the age of twenty-one years, &c., shall be
entitled to vote."
But I submit that in view of the explicit assertions of the equal right
of the whole people, both in the preamble and previous article of the
constitution, this omission of the adjective "female" in the second,
should not be construed into a denial; but, instead, counted as of no
effect. Mark the direct prohibition: "No member of this State shall be
disfranchised, unless by the 'law of the land,' or the judgment of his
peers." "The law of the land," is the United States Constitution: and
there is no provision in that document that can be fairly construed into
a permission to the States to deprive any class of their citizens of
their right to vote.
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