Universal suffrage of 1819
Universal suffrage would be achieved when all have the right to vote without restriction. It could, for example, look like a system where everyone was presumed to have the right to vote unless a government can prove beyond a reasonable doubt the need to revoke voting rights. The trend towards universal suffrage has progressed in some democracies by eliminating some or all of the voting restrictions due to gender, race, religion, social status, education level, wealth,
citizenship, ability and
age. However, throughout history the term 'universal suffrage' has meant different things, with the different assumptions about the groups that were or were not deemed desirable voters.
Early history The short-lived
Corsican Republic (1755–1769) was the first country to grant limited universal suffrage to all citizens over the age of 25. In 1819, 60–80,000 women and men from 30 miles around Manchester assembled in the city's
St. Peter's Square to protest their lack of any representation in the Houses of Parliament. Historian
Robert Poole has called the
Peterloo Massacre one of the defining moments of its age. (The eponymous
Peterloo film featured a scene of women suffragists planning their contribution to the protest.) At that time Manchester had a population of around 140,000 and the population totals of
Greater Manchester were around 490,000. This was followed by other experiments in the
Paris Commune of 1871 and the island republic of
Franceville (1889). From 1840 to 1852, the
Kingdom of Hawai'i granted universal suffrage without mention of sex. In 1893, when the Kingdom of Hawai'i was
overthrown in a coup,
New Zealand was the only independent country to practice universal (active) suffrage, and the
Freedom in the World index lists New Zealand as the only free country in the world in 1893.
Women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote. This was the goal of the suffragists, who believed in using legal means, as well as the
suffragettes, who used extremist measures. Short-lived suffrage equity was drafted into provisions of the State of New Jersey's first, 1776 Constitution, which extended the Right to Vote to unwed female landholders and black land owners. However, the document did not specify an Amendment procedure, and the provision was subsequently replaced in 1844 by the adoption of the
succeeding constitution, which reverted to "all white male" suffrage restrictions. Although the Kingdom of Hawai'i granted female suffrage in 1840, the right was rescinded in 1852. Limited voting rights were gained by some women in Sweden, Britain, and some western U.S. states in the 1860s. In 1893, the British colony of
New Zealand became the first self-governing nation to extend the right to vote to all adult women. In 1894, the women of
South Australia achieved the
right to both vote and stand for Parliament. The autonomous
Grand Duchy of Finland in the
Russian Empire was the first nation to allow all women to both vote and run for parliament.
Anti-women's suffrage propaganda s of suffragettes in front of
parliament and the caption: "This is the house that man built" with a poem. From the
People's History Museum,
Manchester. poster by
Hilda Dallas, 1909 Those against the women's suffrage movement made public organizations to put down the political movement, with the main argument being that a woman's place was in the home, not polls. Political cartoons and public outrage over women's rights increased as the opposition to suffrage worked to organize legitimate groups campaigning against women's voting rights. The Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women was one organization that came out of the 1880s to put down the voting efforts. Much anti-suffrage propaganda poked fun at the idea of women in politics. Political cartoons displayed the most sentiment by portraying the issue of women's suffrage to be swapped with men's lives. Some mocked the popular suffrage hairstyle of full-upward combed hair. Others depicted young girls turning into suffragettes after a failure in life, such as not being married.
Equal suffrage Equal suffrage is sometimes confused with
Universal suffrage, although the meaning of the former is the removal of graded votes, wherein a voter could possess a number of votes in accordance with income, wealth or social status.
Passive suffrage Census suffrage Also known as "censitary suffrage", it is the opposite of
equal suffrage, meaning that the votes cast by those eligible to vote are not equal, but weighed differently according to the person's income or rank in society (e.g., people who do not own property or whose income is lower than a given amount are barred from voting; or people with higher education have more votes than those with lower education; stockholders who have more shares in a given company have more votes than those with fewer shares). In many countries, census suffrage restricted who could vote and be elected: in the United States, until the
Jacksonian reforms of the 1830s, only men who owned land of a specified acreage or monetary value could vote or participate in elections. Similarly, in Brazil, the Constitution of 1824 established that, in order to vote, citizens would need to have an annual income of 200,000 milréis and, to be voted, their minimum annual income would need to be 400,000 milréis.
Compulsory suffrage Where
compulsory suffrage exists, those who are eligible to vote are required by law to do so. Thirty-two countries currently practise this form of suffrage.
Business vote In
local government in England and some of its ex-colonies, businesses formerly had, and in some places still have, a vote in the urban area in which they paid
rates. This is an extension of the historical property-based franchise from
natural persons to other
legal persons. In the United Kingdom, the
Corporation of the City of London has retained and even expanded business vote, following the passing of the
City of London (Ward Elections) Act 2002. This has given business interests within the
City of London, which is a major
financial centre with few residents, the opportunity to apply the accumulated wealth of the corporation to the development of an effective
lobby for UK policies. This includes having the
City Remembrancer, financed by the
City's Cash, as a
parliamentary agent, provided with a special seat in the
House of Commons located in the under-gallery facing the
Speaker's chair. In a leaked document from 2012, an official report concerning the City's Cash revealed that the aim of major occasions such as set-piece sumptuous banquets featuring national politicians was "to increase the emphasis on complementing hospitality with business meetings consistent with the City corporation's role in supporting the City as a financial centre". The first issue taken up by the
Northern Ireland civil rights movement was the business vote, abolished in 1968 (a year before it was abolished in Great Britain outside the City of London). In the
Republic of Ireland, commercial ratepayers can vote in local
plebiscites, for changing the
name of the locality or street, or delimiting a
business improvement district. From 1930 to 1935, 5 of 35 members of
Dublin City Council were "commercial members". In cities in most Australian states, voting is optional for businesses but compulsory for individuals. Some
municipalities in Delaware allow corporations to vote on local matters. ==Basis of exclusion==
Gender ,
Ohio, in 1912 In ancient
Athens, often cited as the birthplace of democracy, only adult, male citizens who owned land were permitted to vote. Through subsequent centuries, Europe was generally ruled by monarchs, though various forms of parliament arose at different times. The high rank ascribed to
abbesses within the
Catholic Church permitted some women the right to sit and vote at national assemblies – as with various high-ranking abbesses in Medieval Germany, who were ranked among the independent princes of the empire. Their Protestant successors enjoyed the same privilege almost into modern times. Marie Guyart, a French nun who worked with the
First Nations peoples of Canada during the seventeenth century, wrote in 1654 regarding the suffrage practices of
Iroquois women, "These female chieftains are women of standing amongst the savages, and they have a deciding vote in the councils. They make decisions there like the men, and it is they who even delegated the first ambassadors to discuss peace." The Iroquois, like many First Nations peoples in North America, had a
matrilineal kinship system. Property and descent were passed through the female line. Women elders voted on hereditary male chiefs and could depose them. The emergence of many modern democracies began with male citizens obtaining the right to vote in advance of female citizens, except in the
Kingdom of Hawai'i, where universal suffrage without mention of age or sex was introduced in 1840; however, a constitutional amendment in 1852 rescinded female voting and put property qualifications on male voting. Voting rights for women were introduced into
international law by the United Nations' Human Rights Commission, whose elected chair was
Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1948 the
United Nations adopted the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Article 21 states: "(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures." The
United Nations General Assembly adopted the
Convention on the Political Rights of Women, which went into force in 1954, enshrining the equal rights of women to vote, hold office, and access public services as set out by national laws. One of the most recent jurisdictions to acknowledge women's full right to vote was
Bhutan in
2008 (its first national elections). Most recently, in 2011
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia let women vote in the
2015 local elections (and from then on) and be appointed to the
Consultative Assembly.
Religion In the aftermath of the
Reformation it was common in European countries for people of disfavored
religious denominations to be denied civil and political rights, often including the right to vote, to stand for election or to sit in parliament. In
Great Britain and
Ireland, Roman Catholics were denied the right to vote from 1728 to 1793, and the right to sit in parliament until 1829. The anti-Catholic policy was justified on the grounds that the loyalty of Catholics supposedly lay with the
Pope rather than the national monarch. In England and Ireland, several Acts practically disenfranchised non-Anglicans or non-Protestants by imposing an oath before admission to vote or to stand for office. The 1672 and 1678
Test Acts forbade non-Anglicans to hold public offices, and the 1727
Disenfranchising Act took away Catholics' voting rights in Ireland, which were restored only in 1788. Jews could not even be naturalized. An attempt was made to change this situation, but the
Jewish Naturalization Act 1753 provoked such reactions that it was repealed the following year.
Nonconformists (
Methodists and
Presbyterians) were only allowed to run for election to the
British House of Commons starting in 1828, Catholics in 1829 (following the
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, which extended the
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791), and Jews in 1858 (with the
Emancipation of the Jews in England).
Benjamin Disraeli could only begin his political career in 1837 because he had been converted to Anglicanism at the age of 12. In several states in the U.S. after the
Declaration of Independence, Jews,
Quakers or Catholics were denied voting rights and/or forbidden to run for office. The
Delaware Constitution of 1776 stated that:Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat, or entering upon the execution of his office, shall (...) also make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit:
I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.This was repealed by article I, section 2 of the
1792 Constitution: "No religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, under this State". The 1778
Constitution of the State of South Carolina stated that "No person shall be eligible to sit in the house of representatives unless he be of the Protestant religion", the 1777
Constitution of the State of Georgia (art. VI) that "The representatives shall be chosen out of the residents in each county (...) and they shall be of the Protestent
(sic) religion". In
Maryland, voting rights and eligibility were extended to Jews in 1828. In
Canada, several religious groups (
Mennonites,
Hutterites,
Doukhobors) were disenfranchised by the wartime Elections Act of 1917, mainly because they opposed military service. This disenfranchisement ended with the closure of the First World War, but was renewed for Doukhobors from 1934 (via the
Dominion Elections Act) to 1955. The first Constitution of modern
Romania in 1866 provided in article 7 that only Christians could become Romanian citizens.
Jews native to Romania were declared stateless persons. In 1879, under pressure from the
Berlin Peace Conference, this article was amended, granting non-Christians the right to become Romanian citizens, but naturalization was granted on a case-by-case basis and was subject to Parliamentary approval. An application took over ten years to process. Only in 1923 was a new constitution adopted, whose article 133 extended Romanian citizenship to all Jewish residents and equality of rights to all Romanian citizens.
Wealth, tax class, social class , 1905 Until the nineteenth century, many Western proto-democracies had
property qualifications in their electoral laws; e.g. only landowners could vote (because the only tax for such countries was the property tax), or the voting rights were weighted according to the amount of taxes paid (as in the
Prussian three-class franchise). Most countries abolished the property qualification for national elections in the late nineteenth century, but retained it for local government elections for several decades. Today these laws have largely been abolished, although the
homeless may not be able to register because they lack regular addresses. In the
United Kingdom, until the
House of Lords Act 1999,
peers who were members of the
House of Lords were excluded from voting for the
House of Commons as they were not commoners. Although there is nothing to prevent the monarch from voting, it is considered improper for the monarch to do so. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, many nations made voters pay to elect officials, keeping impoverished people from being fully enfranchised. These laws were in effect in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Knowledge Sometimes the right to vote has been limited to people who had achieved a certain level of education or passed a certain test. In some US states, "
literacy tests" were previously implemented to exclude those who were illiterate. Black voters in the South were often deemed by election officials to have failed the test even when they did not. Under the 1961 constitution of
Rhodesia, voting on the "A" roll, which elected up to 50 of the 65 members of parliament, was restricted based on education requirements, which in practice led to an overwhelming white vote. Voting on the "B" roll had universal suffrage, but only appointed 15 members of parliament. In the 20th century, many countries other than the US placed voting restrictions on illiterate people, including:
Bolivia,
Brazil,
Canada,
Chile,
Ecuador, and
Peru. Property qualifications have tended to disenfranchise a minority race, particularly if tribally owned land is not allowed to be taken into consideration. In some cases this was an unintended (but usually welcome) consequence. Many African colonies after World War II until decolonization had tough education and property qualifications which practically gave meaningful representation only for rich European minorities. • Unofficial – nothing in law prevents anyone from voting on account of their race, but people of particular races are intimidated or otherwise prevented from exercising this right. This was a common tactic employed by white Southerners against
Freedmen during the
Reconstruction Era and the following period before more formal methods of disenfranchisement became entrenched. Unofficial discrimination could even manifest in ways which, while allowing the act of voting itself, effectively deprive it of any value – for example, in
Israel, the country's
Arab minority has maintained a party-system separate from that of the Jewish majority. In the run-up for the country's
2015 elections, the electoral threshold was raised from 2% to 3.25%, thus forcing the dominant Arab parties –
Hadash, the
United Arab List,
Balad and
Ta'al – either to run under
one list or risk losing their parliamentary representation.
Age All modern democracies require voters to meet age qualifications to vote. Worldwide voting ages are not consistent, differing between countries and even within countries, though the range usually varies between 16 and 21 years. The United Kingdom was the first major democratic nation to
extend suffrage to those 18 and older in 1969. The movement to lower the voting age is one aspect of the
Youth rights movement.
Demeny voting has been proposed as a form of proxy voting by parents on behalf of their children who are below the age of suffrage.
Nomination rules generally include
age of candidacy rules.
Criminality Some countries restrict the voting rights of convicted criminals. Some countries, and
some U.S. states, also deny the right to vote to those convicted of serious crimes even after they are released from prison. In some cases (e.g. in
many U.S. states) the denial of the right to vote is automatic upon a felony conviction; in other cases (e.g. France and Germany) deprivation of the vote is meted out separately, and often limited to perpetrators of specific crimes such as those against the electoral system or corruption of public officials. In the
Republic of Ireland, prisoners are allowed the right to vote, following
the Hirst v UK (No2) ruling, which was granted in 2006.
Canada allowed only prisoners serving a term of less than 2 years the right to vote, but this was found to be unconstitutional in 2002 by the
Supreme Court of Canada in
Sauvé v. Canada (Chief Electoral Officer), and all prisoners have been allowed to vote as of the
2004 Canadian federal election.
Residency Under certain electoral systems elections are held within subnational jurisdictions, thus preventing persons from voting who would otherwise be eligible on the basis that they do not reside within such a jurisdiction, or because they live in an area that cannot participate. In the United States, license plates in Washington, D.C. read "TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION," in reference to the district not holding a seat in either the
House of Representatives or
Senate, however residents can vote in presidential elections based on the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution adopted in 1961. Residents of
Puerto Rico enjoy neither. Sometimes citizens become ineligible to vote because they are
no longer resident in their country of citizenship. For example, Australian citizens who have been outside Australia for more than one and fewer than six years may excuse themselves from the requirement to vote in
Australian elections while they remain outside Australia (voting in Australia is compulsory for resident citizens). Danish citizens that reside permanently outside Denmark lose their right to vote. In some cases, a certain period of residence in a locality may required for the right to vote in that location. For example, in the United Kingdom up to 2001, each 15 February a new electoral register came into effect, based on registration as of the previous 10 October, with the effect of limiting voting to those resident five to seventeen months earlier depending on the timing of the election.
Nationality In most countries, suffrage is limited to citizens and, in many cases, permanent residents of that country. However, some members of supra-national organisations such as the
Commonwealth of Nations and the European Union have granted voting rights to citizens of all countries within that organisation. Until the mid-twentieth century, many Commonwealth countries gave the vote to all British citizens within the country, regardless of whether they were normally resident there. In most cases this was because there was no distinction between
British and local citizenship. Several countries qualified this with restrictions preventing non-white British citizens such as Indians and British Africans from voting. Under European Union law, citizens of European Union countries can vote in each other's local and European Parliament elections on the same basis as citizens of the country in question, but usually not in national elections.
Naturalization In some countries, naturalized citizens do not have the right to vote or to be a candidate, either permanently or for a determined period. Article 5 of the 1831
Belgian Constitution made a difference between ordinary naturalization, and
grande naturalisation. Only (former) foreigners who had been granted
grande naturalisation were entitled to vote, be a candidate for parliamentary elections, or be appointed minister. However, ordinary naturalized citizens could vote for municipal elections. Ordinary naturalized citizens and citizens who had acquired Belgian nationality through marriage could vote, but not run as candidates for parliamentary elections in 1976. The concepts of ordinary and grande naturalization were suppressed from the Constitution in 1991. In
France, the 1889 Nationality Law barred those who had acquired the French nationality by naturalization or marriage from voting, and from eligibility and access to several public jobs. In 1938 the delay was reduced to five years. These instances of discrimination, as well as others against naturalized citizens, were gradually abolished in 1973 (9 January 1973 law) and 1983. In
Morocco, a former French
protectorate, and in Guinea, a former French colony, naturalized citizens are prohibited from voting for five years following their naturalization. In the
Federated States of Micronesia, one must be a Micronesian citizen for at least 15 years to run for parliament. In
Nicaragua,
Peru and the
Philippines, only citizens by birth are eligible for being elected to the national legislature; naturalized citizens enjoy only voting rights. In
Uruguay, naturalized citizens have the right of eligibility to the parliament after five years. In the United States, the President and
Vice President must be natural-born citizens. All other governmental offices may be held by any citizen, although citizens may only run for Congress after an extended period of citizenship (seven years for the House of Representatives and nine for the Senate).
Function In France, an 1872 law, rescinded by a 1945 decree, prohibited all army personnel from voting. In Ireland, police (the
Garda Síochána and, before 1925, the
Dublin Metropolitan Police) were barred from voting in national elections, though not
local elections, from 1923 to 1960. The 1876
Constitution of Texas (article VI, section 1) stated that "The following classes of persons shall not be allowed to vote in this State, to wit: (...) Fifth—All soldiers, marines and seamen, employed in the service of the army or navy of the United States." In many countries with a
presidential system of government a person is forbidden to be a legislator and an official of the executive branch at the same time. Such provisions are found, for example, in Article I of the U.S. Constitution. ==History around the world==