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Suffrage
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Suffrage (from the Latin suffragium, meaning "voting tablet", and figuratively "right to vote"; probably from suffrago "hough", and originally a term for the pastern bone used to cast votes) 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. Suffrage is valuable to the extent that there are opportunities to vote (e.g., initiatives, referendums, or elections).
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Encyclopedia
Suffrage (from the Latin suffragium, meaning "voting tablet", and figuratively "right to vote"; probably from suffrago "hough", and originally a term for the pastern bone used to cast votes) 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. Suffrage is valuable to the extent that there are opportunities to vote (e.g., initiatives, referendums, or elections). Therefore, suffrage varies on two independent dimensions: who is eligible to vote and voting opportunities. Suffrage was also a part of the Jacksonian democracy.
In most democracies, eligible voters can vote in elections of representatives. Voting on substantiative issues via initiative may be available in some jurisdictions but not others. For example, Switzerland permits initiatives at all levels of government whereas United States does not offer initiatives at the federal level or in many states. That new constitutions must be approved by referendum is considered a de facto natural law.
Typically citizens become eligible to vote after reaching the age of legal adulthood. Most democracies no longer extend different voting rights on the basis of sex or race. 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
Universal suffrage is the term used to describe a situation in which the right to vote is not restricted by race, gender, belief, age 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 Tavolara (1886-1899) and Franceville (1889), 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
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 the Isle of Man in 1880. When the ability to vote for members of the House of Keys was proposed for all male householders, the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage sought the vote for similarly qualified women with the measure passed in December 1880.
Of the fully independent countries that currently exist, the first to give women the vote in national elections was New Zealand in 1893. New Zealand was not actually a country at that time, but a colony, and various Australian colonies and states and territories of the United States had already given women the vote prior to 1893. The first major European country 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. Suffrage is a general term that applies not to women only, but to any race, ethnicity, and gender.
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.
Census suffrage
Also known as "censitary 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 ethnic minorities, if they meet the census.
Compulsory suffrage
Compulsory suffrage is a system where those who are eligible to vote are required by law to do so. Thirty-two countries currently practice 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 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 being admitted to vote or to run for an election. The 1673 and 1678 Test Acts forbade non-Anglicans from holding public offices, the 1727 Disenfranchising Act took away Catholics' (Papists) voting rights in Ireland, only restored in 1788. Jews could not even be naturalized, an attempt to change this situation, the Jewish Naturalization Act 1753 provoked such reactions that it was repealed next year. Nonconformists (Methodists and Presbyterians) were only allowed to run for elections to the British House of Commons in 1828, Catholics in 1829 (Catholic Relief Act 1829), Jews in 1858 (Emancipation of the Jews in England). Benjamin Disraeli, often labeled as "Jewish", could only begin his political career in 1837 because he had been converted to Anglicanism at the age of 12.
In several British North American colonies, including after the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Jews, Quakers or Catholics were excluded from the voting rights and/or from running for elections. 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 war-time Elections Act of 1917, mainly because they opposed military service. This disenfranchisement ended with the end of the First World War, but was renewed for Doukhobors from 1934 (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 of 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 Parliament 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.
In the Republic of Maldives, only Muslim Maldivian citizens have voting rights and are eligible for parliamentary elections.
Wealth, tax class, social class
Until the nineteenth century, many Western democracies had property qualifications in their electoral laws; e.g. only landowners could vote, or the voting rights were weighed 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, 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.
Knowledge
Sometimes the right to vote has been limited to people who had achieved a certain level of education or passed a certain test, e.g. "literacy tests" in some states of the US.
In practice, the composition and application of these tests were frequently manipulated so as to functionally limit the electorate on the basis of other characteristics like wealth or race.
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 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
All modern democracies require voters to meet age qualifications to vote. Worldwide voting ages are not consistent, differing between countries and even within countries, usually between 16 and 21 years.
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.
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 an area which cannot participate. In the United States, residents of Washington, DC receive no voting representation in Congress, although they have full representation in presidential elections. Residents of Puerto Rico have 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 more than one and less 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).
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 given 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 in 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 others' local and European Parliament elections on the same basis as citizens of the country in question.
Naturalization
In some countries, naturalized citizens do not enjoy the right of vote and/or to be 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 or be candidate for parliamentary elections or to be appointed as minister. However, ordinary naturalized citizens could vote for municipal elections. Ordinary naturalized citizens and citizens who had acquired Belgian nationality through marriage were only admitted to vote, but not to be candidate, 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, eligibility and access to several public jobs. In 1938 the delay was reduced to 5 years. These discriminations, 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 5 years after their naturalization.
In the Federated States of Micronesia, Micronesian citizenship for a minimum of 15 years is an eligibility condition to be elected to the parliament.
In Nicaragua, Peru and the Philippines, only citizens by birth are eligible for being elected to parliament; naturalized citizens enjoy only voting rights.
In Uruguay, naturalized citizens have the right of eligibility to the parliament after 5 years.
Function
In France, an 1872 law, only rescinded by a 1945 decree, prohibited all army personnel from voting.
In the United Kingdom, public servants have to resign before running for an election.
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.".
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 21 to 18.
- 1982 - Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees all adult citizens the right to vote.
- 1993 - Any elector can vote in advance.
History of suffrage 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 Maori (indigenous) men.
- 1860 - Franchise extended to holders of miner's licenses who met all voting qualifications except that of property.
- 1867 - Maori seats established, giving Maori four reserved seats in the lower house. There was no property qualification; thus Maori men gained universal suffrage before any other group of New Zealanders. However, the number of seats did not reflect the size of the Maori population.
- 1879 - Property requirement abolished.
- 1893 - Women given equal voting rights with men, making New Zealand the first nation in the world to allow their adult women to vote.
- 1969 - Voting age lowered to 20.
- 1974 - Voting age lowered to 18.
- 1975 - Franchise extended to permanent residents of New Zealand, regardless of whether they have citizenship.
- 1996 - Number of Maori seats increased to reflect Maori population.
History of suffrage in Australia
- 1884 - Henrietta Dugdale forms the first Australian women’s suffrage society in Melbourne.
- 1894 - South Australian women eligible to vote.
- 1902 - Women able to vote federally, and in the state of New South Wales.
- 1921 - Edith Cowan elected to the West Australian Legislative Assembly as member for West Perth, the first woman elected to any Australian Parliament.
History of suffrage in the Muslim world
History of suffrage in Japan
History of suffrage in the United Kingdom
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 persuaded 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 18 and older
- 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
In the United States, suffrage is determined by the separate states, not federally. However, the "right to vote" is expressly mentioned in five Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. These five Amendments limit the basis upon which the right to vote may be abridged or denied:
- 15th Amendment (1870): "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."
- 19th Amendment (1920): "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 sex."
- 24th Amendment (1964): "The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax."
- 26th Amendment (1971): "The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."
In addition, the 23rd Amendment (1961): provides that residents of the District of Columbia can vote for the President and Vice-President.
Bibliography
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 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: ISBN 978-0837731032"Smallest State in the World," New York Times, June 19, 1896, p 6 , Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, 2007.
See also
External links
- Campaign to Lower the Voting Age in the UK
- 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. - january 19, 1919 - first suffrage (active and passive) for women in Germany
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