Suffrage (from the Latin suffragium, meaning "vote") is the civil right to vote, or the exercise of that right. In that context, it is also called political franchise or simply the franchise. In most democracies citizens or subjects above the voting age can normally vote in its elections. Resident aliens can vote in some countries and in others exceptions are made for citizens of countries with which they have close links (e.g. some members of the Commonwealth of Nations, and the members of the European Union).

Types of suffrage

Universal suffrage

Main article: Universal suffrage

Universal suffrage is the term used to describe a situation in which the right to vote is not restricted by race, gender, belief or social status. It typically does not extend a right to vote to all residents of a region; distinctions are frequently made in regard to citizenship, age, and occasionally mental capacity or criminal convictions.

The short-lived Corsican republic (1755-1769) was the first country to grant limited universal suffrage for all inhabitants over the age of 25. This was followed by other experiments in the Paris Commune of 1871 and the island republics of Franceville (1879-1887) and Tavolara (1886-1899), and then by New Zealand in 1893. Finland was the first European country to grant universal suffrage to its citizens in its 1906 elections, and the first country in the world to make every citizen eligible to run for parliament.

Women's suffrage

Main article: Women's suffrage

Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote on the same terms as men. This was the goal of the suffragists and the "Suffragettes". The first country to give women the vote in national elections was Tavolara in 1886, followed by New Zealand in 1893, although various states and territories in Australia and the United States had given women the vote prior to this. The first country to give women the right to stand for election as well as to vote was Finland in 1906.

Manhood suffrage

Manhood suffrage is the right of adult men of all classes, ethnicities, races and religions to vote unless disqualified by mental illness or criminal conviction.

Equal suffrage

Equal suffrage is a term sometimes confused with Universal suffrage, although its meaning is the removal of graded votes, where a voter could possess a number of votes in accordance with income, wealth or social status, so that everyone's vote is equal.

Census suffrage

Census suffrage is the opposite of Equal suffrage, meaning that the votes cast by those eligible to vote are not equal, but are weighed differently according to the person's rank in the census (e.g., people with high income have more votes than those with a small income). The suffrage may therefore be limited, usually to the propertied classes, but can still be universal, including, for instance, women or black people, if they meet the census.

Compulsory suffrage

Main article: Compulsory suffrage

Compulsory suffrage is a system where those who are eligible to vote are required by law to do so. Australia practises this form of suffrage.

Forms of exclusion from suffrage

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, stand for election or sit in parliament. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Roman Catholics were denied the right to vote until 1788, 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.

Social class

Until the nineteenth century, many Western democracies had property qualifications in their electoral laws; generally only landowners could vote. 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, prior to the House of Lords Act 1999, peers who were members of the House of Lords were excluded from voting for the House of Commons because they were not commoners. The Sovereign is also ineligible to vote in British parliamentary elections.

Race

Various countries, usually with large non-white populations, have historically denied the vote to people of particular races or to non-whites in general. This has been achieved in a number of ways:

• Official - laws and regulations passed specifically disenfranchising people of particular races (for example, indigenous Australians until 1967, and South Africa under apartheid).
• Indirect - nothing in law specifically prevents anyone from voting on account of their race, but other laws or regulations are used to exclude people of a particular race. In southern American states before the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, literacy and other tests were used to disenfranchise African-Americans. Property qualifications have tended to disenfranchise non-whites, particularly if tribally-owned land is not allowed to be taken into consideration. In some cases (such as early colonial New Zealand) property qualifications were deliberately used to disenfranchise non-whites; in other cases this was an unintended (but not usually unwelcome) consequence.
• 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.

Age

Main article: Voting age

All modern democracies require voters to meet age qualifications to vote. Worldwide voting ages are not consistent, fluctuating between countries and even within countries, usually between 16 and 21.

Criminality

Many 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 after they are released from prison. In some cases (e.g. the felony disenfranchisement laws found in many U.S. states) the denial of the right to vote is automatic on a felony conviction; in other cases (e.g. provisions found in many parts of continental Europe) the denial of the right to vote is an additional penalty that the court can choose to impose, over and above the penalty of imprisonment, such as in France or Germany. In the Republic of Ireland, prisoners are not specifically denied the right to vote, but are also not provided access to a ballot station, so are effectively disenfranchised. Canada allowed only prisoners serving a term of less than 2 years the right to vote, but this was found unconstitutional in 2002 by the Supreme Court of Canada in Sauvé v. Canada (Chief Electoral Officer), and all prisoners were allowed to vote as of the 2004 Canadian federal election. Some countries also disenfranchize people in psychiatric facilities.

Residency

Under certain electoral systems elections are held within subnational jurisdictions, preventing persons who would otherwise be eligible from voting because they do not reside within such a jurisdiction, or because they live in a kind which cannot participate. In the United States, residents of Washington, DC receive no voting representation in Congress and only three electoral votes, while residents of Puerto Rico have neither.

History of suffrage around the world

History of suffrage in Canada

• 1916 - Manitoba becomes the first province where women have the right to vote in provincial elections.
• 1918 - Women gain full voting rights in federal elections.
• 1919 - Women gain the right to run for federal office.
• 1948 - Racial exclusions are removed from election laws.
• 1955 - Religious exclusions are removed from election laws.
• 1960 - Right to vote is extended unconditionally to First Nations people. (Previously they could vote only by giving up their status as First Nations people; this requirement was removed.)
• 1960 - Right to vote in advance is extended to all electors willing to swear they would be absent on election day.
• 1970 - Voting age lowered from 20 to 18.
• 1982 - Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees all citizens the right to vote.
• 1993 - Any elector can vote in advance.

History of suffrage in New Zealand

Main article: History of voting in New Zealand

• 1853 - British government passes the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852, granting limited self rule, including a bicameral parliament to the colony. The vote was limited to male British subjects aged 21 or over who owned or rented sufficient property, and were not imprisoned for a serious offence. Communally owned land was excluded from the property qualification, thus disenfranchising most Māori (indigenous) men.
• 1860 - Franchise extended to holders of miner's licenses who met all voting qualifications except that of property.
• 1867 - Māori seats established, giving Mãori four reserved seats in the lower house. There was no property qualification; thus Mãori men gained universal suffrage before any other group of New Zealanders. However the number of seats did not reflect the size of the Māori population.
• 1879 - Property requirement abolished.
• 1893 - Women given equal voting rights with men.
• 1969 - Voting age lowered to 21.
• 1974 - Voting age lowered to 18.
• 1975 - Franchise extended to permanent residents of New Zealand, regardless of whether they have citizenship.
• 1996 - Number of Māori seats increased to reflect Māori population.

History of suffrage in the United Kingdom

See also:

See also:

Suffrage in the United Kingdom was slowly changed over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries to allow universal suffrage through the use of the Reform Acts and the Representation of the People Acts.

• Reform Act 1832 - extended voting rights to adult males who rented propertied land of a certain value, so allowing 1 in 7 males in the UK voting rights
• Reform Act 1867 - enfranchised all male householders, so increasing male suffrage to the United Kingdom
• Representation of the People Act 1884 - amended the Reform Act of 1867 so that it would apply equally to the countryside; this brought the voting population to 5,500,000, although 40% of males were still disenfranchised, whilst women could not vote
• Between 1885-1918 moves were made by the suffragette movement to ensure votes for women. However the duration of the First World War stopped this reform movement. See also The Parliamentary Franchise in the United Kingdom 1885-1918.
• Representation of the People Act 1918 - the consequences of World War I convinced the government to expand the right to vote, not only for the many men who fought in the war who were disenfranchised, but also for the women who helped in the factories and elsewhere as part of the war effort. Property restrictions for voting were lifted for men, who could vote at 21; however women's votes were given with these property restrictions, and were limited to those over 30 years old. This raised the electorate from 7.7 million to 21.4 million with women making up 40% of the electorate. Seven percent of the electorate had more than one vote. The first election with this system was the United Kingdom general election, 1918
• Representation of the People Act 1928 - this made women's voting rights equal with men, with voting possible at 21 with no property restrictions
• Representation of the People Act 1948 - the act was passed to prevent plural voting
• Representation of the People Act 1969 - extension of suffrage to those over 18
• The Representation of the People Acts of 1983, 1985 and 2000 further modified voting
• Electoral Administration Act 2006 - modified the ways in which people were able to vote and reduced the age of standing at a public election from 21 to 18.

History of suffrage in the United States

Main article: Voting rights in the United States

In the United States, suffrage is determined by the separate states, not federally. There is no national "right to vote". The states and the people have changed the U.S. Constitution five times to disallow states from limiting suffrage, thereby expanding it.

• 15th Amendment (1870): no law may restrict any race from voting
• 19th Amendment (1920): no law may restrict any sex from voting
• 23rd Amendment (1961): residents of the District of Columbia can vote for the President and Vice-President
• 24th Amendment (1964): neither Congress nor the states may condition the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other type of tax
• 26th Amendment (1971): no law may restrict those 18 years of age or older from voting because of their age'''

References

Bibliography

• Neill Atkinson, Adventures in Democracy: A History of the Vote in New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2003).
• Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000). ISBN 0-465-02968-X
• "Smallest State in the World," New York Times, June 19 1896, p 6
• A History of the Vote in Canada, Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, 2007.

See also

• Electorate
• Democracy
• Direct democracy
• The Famous Five (Canada)
• Voting rights in the United States

External links

• National Youth Rights Association
• Votes at 16 Campaign to Lower the Voting Age in the UK
• Suffrage in Canada
• Vote sizing is different from the suffrage (vote counting) reform movements, in that each voter’s political voice can be altered; whereas vote counting usually maintains that each voter only gets one (or equal amounts) vote.
• Women´s suffrage in Germany - january 19 1919 - first suffrage (active and passive) for women in Germany

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