All States have citizenship, residence, and age requirements for voting. Other voting qualifications differ from State to State. Some requirements—especially those that were used to disenfranchise certain groups—have been eliminated over time.

UNIVERSAL REQUIREMENTS

• Today, every State requires that any person who wants to vote must be able to satisfy qualifications based on three factors: (1) citizenship, (2) residence, and (3) age. the States have some leeway in shaping the details of the first two of these factors; they have almost no discretion with regard to the third one.

CITIZENSHIP

• Aliens are generally denied the right to vote in the United States. Still, nothing in the Constitution says that aliens cannot vote, and and State could allow them to do so if it chose. At one time about a fourth of the States permitted those aliens who had applied for naturalization to vote. Typically, the western States did so to help attract settlers. Only two States now draw any distinction between native-born and naturalized citizens with regard to suffrage. The Minnesota constitution requires a person to have been an American citizen for at least three months before he or she can vote in elections there. And the Pennsylvania constitution says that one month before an election in order to vote in the State.
  

RESIDENCE

• In order to vote in this country today, one must be a legal resident of the State in which he or she wishes to cast a ballot. In most States a person must have lived in the State for atleast a certain period of time before he or she can vote. The States adopted residence requirements for two reasons: (1) to keep a political machine from importing enough outsiders to affect the outcome of local elections, and (2) to allow new voters at least some time to become familiar with the candidates and issues in an election. Residence requirements are not nearly so long today. In fact, most States now require that a voter be a legal resident but attach no time period to that qualification. About a fourth of them say that a voter must have lived in the State for atleast 30 day. In a few, the period is somewhat shorter-- for example, 29 days in Arizona, 28 in Kentucky, 20 in Minnesota, and 10 in Wisconsin.

AGE

• A person whose qualifications to vote have been questioned on the basis of a felony conviction must vote a questioned ballot. A person's vote shall not count where the voter has been convicted either by state courts of Alaska, by the courts of another state or by the federal courts of a felony involving a moral turpitude under Alaska law unless his civil rights have been restored by law or by proper authority in the jurisdiction in which the person was convicted. Felonies involving moral turpitude include, but are not limited to, the crimes of murder, rape, robbery, kidnaping, burglary, incest, and other crimes, which are punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary under Alaska law and which involve conduct contrary to justice, honesty, modesty, or good morals.