An essay published by American Thinker under the headline “Is It Time To Repeal The 19th Amendment?” opens with a provocative question and then, within a few paragraphs, sets it aside in favor of something the author considers more sweeping: a reconsideration of who qualifies to vote in the first place.
The piece, written by Nodrog Snave and dated September 13, 2026, describes itself as a semi-satirical look at restoring what it calls rationality to the electorate. The author says the idea of scrapping the amendment that gave women the vote — a topic he says he has discussed in several recent conversations and seen on other websites — is “appealing” but ultimately “the wrong way to go,” comparing it to the SAVE America Act as an attempt to patch a system that, in his view, requires a “total conceptual rethink.”
From Who Can Vote to Who Should Be Required To
The essay’s central move is to reframe the issue. Rather than debating whether to strip a particular group of the franchise, the author asks who should be permitted to vote — or possibly compelled to. He notes that nearly every historical democracy began with qualifications attached to voting: property ownership, class or nobility, taxpayer status, gender, race, religion, measures of competence, and age. Many of those filters, he concedes, were designed to exclude people on racial grounds, and most are “rightfully no longer part of the conversation.” But some, he suggests, may be worth reviving.
Age comes first. The author argues it is “not unreasonable” to raise the voting age back to 21, or even 25, so that citizens earn the franchise through life experience rather than arriving at the ballot box armed only with what he characterizes as lessons from teachers’ unions.
Property ownership is next. The old property requirement, he writes, is probably “a tad draconian,” particularly when homeownership is growing harder to achieve. In its place he proposes a “matrix” of indicators that a voter has skin in the game — property, assets, volunteer work, or national service such as firefighting, paramedic work, the military, the Coast Guard, or police work. Politicians and public bureaucrats, he adds, need not apply.
The 19th Amendment and Its Limits
Only after laying that groundwork does the essay return to the amendment itself. The author describes the growing talk of repeal as being about “getting rid of the mad, blue-haired females who are distinguished by being irrational, emotional, and often psychotic” — language he then partially walks back, insisting the point is not to stop women from voting but to stop “mad or ‘unqualified’ people” of either sex.
He floats possible screening mechanisms. A psychiatric evaluation is mentioned and then largely dismissed as too “medical,” though the author jokes that a drug test might fit, since you cannot drive intoxicated but can still vote. He settles instead on a short qualification quiz at the top of the ballot, offering three sample questions: how many stars are on the current U.S. flag, how many stripes are on it, and the three branches of government. Asked and answered correctly, he suggests, the idea of repeal might not look “quite so appalling.”
His stated objection is to voters who cannot make decisions in the nation’s best interests without letting a single issue — or outside influencers — cloud their judgment. “This is not really about men versus women,” he writes, before listing Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, and Golda Meir as examples of women who led well and conceding that “masses of men have screwed up everything they touched.”
Skin in the Game
The essay argues that the 19th Amendment would never have been necessary if the original constitutional voting arrangements had produced democratic decisions “without fear or favor,” free of media, cultural bias, and lobbying pressure. What’s needed now, in the author’s telling, is a national conversation about qualifications — not IQ tests or university credentials, but evidence of contribution, commitment, and pride in the country.
From there the suggestions grow more expansive. Birthplace alone may not suffice, given what he calls a politicized or cowardly judiciary and decisions the public struggles to accept. He asks whether the country might eventually restrict voting to third-generation Americans, require two years of genuine public service, or return to the “Potwalloper Franchise” — the old English standard under which a man could vote if his hearth was large enough to boil a pot of soup.
The column closes by returning to the metaphor that runs through it: driving the most successful democratic republic in history “needs good people controlling the wheel.” His final proposal is that voters, alongside whatever other criteria are adopted, be asked at the top of the ballot to write an essay on why they should be allowed to vote — “in English.”
What the Essay Is and Isn’t
It is worth being clear about the register here. The author labels the piece semi-satirical, and much of it reads that way — the flag trivia, the soup-pot franchise, the essay prompt tucked onto a ballot. But the underlying argument is presented earnestly, and it points in a direction that is notably broader than the headline suggests: less a case for revoking women’s suffrage than a case for rethinking universal adult suffrage altogether, along lines of age, wealth, service, and civic knowledge.
Whether that distinction matters is, in effect, the debate the column is trying to start. Its author says so explicitly, more than once: repeal the 19th Amendment if you like, but that would treat a symptom. The real subject, as he frames it, is the ballot itself — who reaches it, and what they should have to demonstrate before they do.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/09/is-it-time-to-repeal-the-19th-amendment/