. is the only international organ elected with universal suffrage (since 1979). In the first modern democracies, governments restricted the vote to those with property and wealth, which almost always meant a minority of the male population. In some jurisdictions, other restrictions existed, such as requiring voters to practice a given religion. In all modern democracies, the number of people who could vote has increased progressively with time. The 19th century saw many movements advocating "universal [male] suffrage", most notably in Europe and North America. A year later, South Australia granted all citizens the right to vote and stand for election, making it the first place in the world where women could stand as candidates for election to parliament. From there, this groundbreaking reform set a precedent for broader suffrage rights worldwide. However, voting rights were often limited to those of the dominant ethnicity. In the United States, after the principle of "
One person, one vote" was established in the early 1960s by the
U.S. Supreme Court under
Earl Warren, the
U.S. Congress, together with the
Warren Court, continued to protect and expand the
voting rights of all Americans, especially African Americans, through the
Civil Rights Act of 1964,
Voting Rights Act of 1965 and several Supreme Court rulings. In addition, the term "
suffrage" is also associated specifically with
women's suffrage in the United States; a movement to extend the franchise to women began in the mid-19th century and culminated in 1920, when the United States ratified the
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing the right of women to vote. It would be 1928 before voting rights were guaranteed to all women in the
UK. France, under the
1793 Jacobin constitution, was the first major country to enact suffrage for all adult males, though it was never formally used in practice (the constitution was immediately suspended before being implemented, and the
subsequent election occurred in 1795 after the
fall of the Jacobin government in 1794 discredited most ideas associated with them, including that constitution). Elsewhere in the
Francophone world, the
Republic of Haiti legislated for universal male suffrage in 1816. The
Second French Republic instituted adult male suffrage after the
revolution of 1848. This was followed shortly after by the colony of
South Australia in 1894, which was the second to allow women to vote, but the first colony to permit women to stand for election as well. In 1906, the autonomous Russian territory known as
Grand Duchy of Finland (which became the Republic of Finland in 1917) became the first territory in the world to implement unrestricted universal suffrage, as women could stand as candidates, unlike in New Zealand, and without indigenous ethnic exclusion, like in Australia. It also led to the election of the world's first female members of parliament
the following year. Federal states and colonial or autonomous territories prior to
World War I have multiple examples of early introduction of universal suffrage. However, these legal changes were effected with the permission of the British, Russian or other government bodies, which were considered the sovereign nation at the time. For this reason, Australia (1901), New Zealand (1908) and Finland (1917) all have different dates of achieving independent nationhood. depicting the birth of universal suffrage, "one of the most sacred rights of Man, born in France on 24 february 1848." The
First French Republic adopted universal male suffrage briefly in 1792; it was one of the first national systems that abolished all property requirements as a prerequisite for allowing men to register and vote. Greece recognized full male suffrage in 1844. Spain recognized it in the
Constitution of 1869 and France and Switzerland have continuously done so since the
1848 Revolution (for resident male citizens). Upon independence in the 19th century, several Latin-American countries and Liberia in Africa initially extended suffrage to all adult males, but subsequently restricted it based on property requirements. The
German Empire implemented full male suffrage in 1871. In the United States, the
Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870 during the
Reconstruction era, provided that "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." This amendment aimed to guarantee the right to vote to African Americans, many of whom had been
enslaved in the
South prior to the end (1865) of the
American Civil War and the 1864–1865
abolition of slavery. Despite the amendment, however,
blacks were disfranchised in the former Confederate states
after 1877; Southern officials ignored the amendment and blocked black citizens from voting through a variety of devices, including
poll taxes,
literacy tests, and
grandfather clauses; violence and
terrorism were used to intimidate some would-be voters. Southern blacks did not effectively receive the right to vote until the
Voting Rights Act of 1965. However, Australia did not implement universal suffrage at this time – nationwide voting rights for
Aboriginal Australians were not established until 1962, before that varying by state. Many societies in the past have denied or abridged
Political representation on the basis of race or ethnicity, related to discriminatory ideas about
citizenship. For example, in
apartheid-era South Africa, non-White people could generally not vote in national elections until the first
multi-party elections in 1994. However, a nonracial franchise existed under the
Cape Qualified Franchise, which was replaced by a number of
separate MPs in 1936 (Blacks) and 1958 (Coloureds). Later, the
Tricameral Parliament established separate chambers for Whites, Coloureds and Indians. Rhodesia enacted a similar statute to the former in
its proclaimed independence of 1965, which however allowed a smaller number of representatives for the considerably larger Black majority (under its 1961 constitution, the voting classes had been based on socio-economic standards, which marginalized most Black and a few White voters to a separate set of constituencies, under the principle of
weighted voting; this was replaced in 1969 by an explicitly racial franchise, with delegated all Blacks to the 'B' voters roll). ==Women's suffrage==