Universal suffrage

**Universal suffrage** (also called **universal franchise**, **general suffrage**, and **common suffrage of the common man**) gives the right to vote to all adult citizens, regardless of wealth, income, gender, social status, race, ethnicity, or any other restriction, subject only to relatively minor exceptions. In its original 19th-century usage by reformers in Britain, *universal suffrage* was understood to mean only universal manhood suffrage; the vote was extended to women later, during the women's suffrage movement.

There are variations among countries in terms of specifics of the right to vote; the minimum age is usually between 18 and 25 years (see age of majority) and "the insane, certain classes of convicted criminals, and those punished for certain electoral offenses" sometimes lack the right to vote.

In most countries, universal adult suffrage (the right to vote but not necessarily the right to be a candidate) followed about a generation after universal male franchise. Notable exceptions in Europe were France, where women could not vote until 1944, Greece (1952), and Switzerland (1971).

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. In the 19th century in Europe, Great Britain and North America, there were movements advocating "universal [male] suffrage".

In the United States, after the principle of "one man, one vote" was established in the early 1960s by 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 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; a movement to extend the franchise to women began in the mid-nineteenth 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.

## Expanding suffrage

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 subsequent election occurring in 1795 after the fall of the Jacobin government in 1794). 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.

Following the French revolutions, movements in the Western world toward universal suffrage occurred in the early 19th century, and focused on removing property requirements for voting. In 1867 Germany (the North German Confederation) enacted suffrage for all adult males. In the United States following the American Civil War, slaves were freed and granted rights of citizens, including suffrage for adult males (although several states established restrictions largely, though not completely, diminishing these rights). In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the focus of the universal suffrage movement came to include the extension of the right to vote to women, as happened from the post-Civil War era in several Western states and during the 1890s in a number of British colonies.

On 19 September 1893 the British Governor of New Zealand, Lord Glasgow, gave assent to a new electoral act, which meant that New Zealand became the first British-controlled colony in which women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections. 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. Twelve years later, 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 lead 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.

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.

In 1893 the self-governing colony New Zealand became the first country in the world (except for the short-lived 18th-century Corsican Republic) to grant active universal suffrage by giving women the right to vote. It did not grant universal full suffrage (the right to both vote and be a candidate, or both active and passive suffrage) until 1919.

In 1902 the Commonwealth of Australia become the first country to grant full suffrage for women, i.e. the first country in the world to give women the rights both to vote and to run for office.
However, Australia did not implement universal suffrage at this time - Aboriginal Australians did not get the right to vote until 1962, because in the early 20th century Australian law did not considered them human.

Several European nations that had enacted universal suffrage had their normal legal process, or their status as independent nations, interrupted during and after the First World War of 1914-1918.

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 (except under the Cape Qualified Franchise, which was replaced by a number of separate MPs in 1936 (Blacks) and 1958 (Coloureds), later by the Tricameral Parliament). Rhodesia enacted a similar statute 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 openly racial franchise, with delegated all Blacks to the 'B' voters roll).

## Dates by country

States have granted and revoked universal suffrage at various times. This list can be organised in three ways:

* **Universal** There are no distinctions between voters over a certain age in any part of its territories due to gender, literacy, wealth, social status, religion, race, or ethnicity.
* **Male** is for all males over a certain age in the majority ethnic or sectarian group irrespective of literacy, wealth, or social status.
* **Female** is for when all women over a certain age can vote on the same terms as men
* **Ethnicity** is for when all eligible voters over a certain age can vote on the same terms as the majority group irrespective of religion, race, or ethnicity.

*Note: The table can be sorted alphabetically or chronologically using the  icons.*

## Women's suffrage

Main articles: Women's suffrage
In Sweden-Finland, women's suffrage was granted during the Age of Liberty from 1718 until 1772.

In Corsica, women's suffrage was granted in 1755 and lasted until 1769.

Women's suffrage (with the same property qualifications as for men) was granted in New Jersey in 1776 (the word "inhabitants" was used instead of "men" in the 1776 Constitution) and rescinded in 1807.

The Pitcairn Islands granted restricted women's suffrage in 1838. Various other countries and states granted restricted women's suffrage in the later half of the nineteenth century, starting with South Australia in 1861.

The first unrestricted women's suffrage in a major country was granted in New Zealand in 1893. The women's suffrage bill was adopted mere weeks before the general election of 1893. Māori men had been granted suffrage in 1867, white men in 1879. The *Freedom in the World* index lists New Zealand as the only free country in the world in 1893.

South Australia first granted women suffrage and allowed them to stand for parliament in 1894.

The autonomous Grand Principality of Finland, a decade before becoming the republic of Finland, was the first country in the world to implement full universal suffrage, by giving women full political rights, i.e. both the right to vote and to run for office, and was the second in the world and the first in Europe to give women the right to vote. The world's first female members of parliament were elected in Finland the following year, 1907.

In 1931, the Second Spanish Republic allowed women the right of passive suffrage with three women being elected.

During a discussion on extending women's right to active suffrage, the Radical Socialist Victoria Kent confronted the Radical Clara Campoamor. Kent argued that Spanish women were not yet prepared to vote and, since they were too influenced by the Catholic Church, they would vote for right-wing candidates. Campoamor however pleaded for women's rights regardless of political orientation. Her point finally prevailed and, in the election of 1933, the political right won with the vote of citizens of any sex over 23. Both Campoamor and Kent lost their seats.

## Youth suffrage, children's suffrage, and suffrage in school

Main articles: Youth suffrage
The movement to lower the voting age is one aspect of the Youth rights movement. Organizations such as the National Youth Rights Association are active in the United States to advocate for a lower voting age, with some success, among other issues related to youth rights.

Democratic schools practice and support universal suffrage in school, which allows a vote to every member of the school, including students and staff. Such schools hold that this feature is essential for students to be ready to move into society at large.

## Notes

1. ↑ While local government gerrymandering in Northern Ireland was one of the factors which led to the Troubles, parliamentary elections still took place for all British citizens. In 1972 the British Parliament was unwilling to grant the mostly Protestant unionist Northern Ireland government more authoritarian special powers since it was now convinced of its inability to restore order. So they suspended the Parliament of Northern Ireland and the post of Governor and made provision for direct rule by the elected government of the United Kingdom.
2. ↑ Until the Reform Act 1832 specified 'male persons', a few women had been able to vote in parliamentary elections through property ownership, although this was rare. In local government elections, women lost the right to vote under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. Single women ratepayers received the right to vote in the Municipal Franchise Act 1869. This right was confirmed in the Local Government Act 1894 and extended to include some married women. By 1900, over 1 million women were registered for local government elections in England.
3. ↑ Graduates of universities lost the right to vote in university constituencies as well as parliamentary boroughs and property owners lost the right to vote both in the constituency where their property lay and that in which they lived, if the two were different. For elections to the Parliament of Northern Ireland, these changes were made under the Electoral Law Act 1968.
4. ↑ While constitutionally given the right to vote by the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 and 19th Amendment in 1920, the reality of the country was such that most African Americans and some poor whites could not vote until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Starting in 1888 Southern states legalized disenfranchisement by enacting Jim Crow laws; they amended their constitutions and passed legislation to impose various voting restrictions, including literacy tests, poll taxes, property-ownership requirements, moral character tests, requirements that applicants interpret a particular document, and grandfather clauses that allowed otherwise-ineligible persons to vote if their grandfathers voted (which excluded many African Americans whose grandfathers had been ineligible). During this period, the Supreme Court generally upheld state efforts to discriminate against racial minorities. In Giles v. Harris (1903), the Court held that irrespective of the Fifteenth Amendment, the judiciary did not have the remedial power to force states to register racial minorities to vote.
5. ↑ The 1828 presidential election was the first in which non-property-holding white males could vote in the vast majority of states, but this was not consistent across the country until the last state, North Carolina, abolished property qualification in 1856 resulting in a close approximation to universal white male suffrage (however tax-paying requirements remained in five states in 1860 and survived in two states until the 20th century). The Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 altered the way each state is represented in the House of Representatives. It counted all residents for apportionment including slaves, overriding the three-fifths compromise, and reduced a state's apportionment if it wrongfully denied males over the age of 21 the right to vote; however, this was not enforced in practice. Some poor white men remained excluded at least until 1965. For state elections, it was not until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in *Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections* (1966) that all state poll taxes were unconstitutional as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This removed a burden on the poor.
6. ↑ 19th Amendment in 1920 prohibited any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex, but some poor white women remained excluded at least until 1965. For state elections, it was not until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in *Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections* (1966) that all state poll taxes were unconstitutional as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This removed a burden on the poor.
7. ↑ Following the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era began in 1888. The Indian Citizenship Act in 1924 gave Native Americans the right to vote and officially recognized them as citizens, nearly two-thirds of whom already had citizenship and the right to vote. African Americans and others gained full enfranchisement through passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.