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Suffrage

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Animal & Human Rights;
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   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, a term dating from
   the time when the Franks of ancient France were free.

   Historically, many groups have been excluded from the right to vote, on
   various grounds, because their members were subjects of feudal kings or
   princes or otherwise not free humans. Sometimes this exclusion was an
   explicit policy, clearly stated in the electoral laws; at other times
   it was implemented in practice by provisions that may seem to have
   little to do with the exclusion actually being implemented (e.g. poll
   taxes and literacy requirements used to keep emancipated slaves in the
   pre- Civil Rights Era American South from voting). In other cases, a
   group has been permitted to vote, but the electoral system or
   institutions of government gave their votes less influence than those
   of other groups.

   The legitimacy of democratic government is usually considered to derive
   primarily from universal suffrage.

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, sex, belief or social
   status. It typically does not extend a right to vote to all citizens or
   residents of a region. Distinctions are frequently made in regard to
   nationality, age, and occasionally mental capacity or criminal
   convictions.

   New Zealand was the first country to grant limited universal suffrage
   in 1893. Finland was the first European country to grant universal
   suffrage to its citizens in 1906, and the first country to make every
   citizen eligible to run for parliament.

Women's suffrage

   Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote, usually on the same
   terms as men. This was the goal of the suffragists and the "
   Suffragettes". In many western democracies it was a major Liberal and
   Democratic movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The
   first country to give women the vote in national elections was New
   Zealand in 1893, although various states and territories in Australia
   and the United States had given women the vote in local elections prior
   to this.

Manhood suffrage

   Manhood suffrage is the right of adult men of all classes, 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 persons 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

   Compulsory suffrage is a system where those who are eligible to vote
   are required by law to do so. Australia is an example of a country
   practicing 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 particular religions or religious denominations to be
   denied certain civil and political rights, often including the right to
   vote, stand for election or sit in parliament. An example of this is
   that 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

   Up until the nineteenth century, many Western democracies had property
   qualifications in their electoral laws, that generally meant that only
   people who owned land could vote. Today, those laws have largely been
   abolished. However, in some countries the practice still applies,
   although perhaps unintentionally, as most democratic countries require
   an address for the electors to be qualified to vote. In practice, this
   may exclude many who have not the means to own or rent living quarters,
   such as the homeless. Many countries also discriminate on the basis of
   criminal or psychiatric record (see below), which are very strongly
   correlated with class and 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,
       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. One example of this is that in
       some southern American states before the passage of the Voting
       Rights Act, literacy and other tests were used to disenfranchise
       African-Americans. In various places 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

   Despite the best of universal suffrage, all modern democracies require
   voters to meet age qualifications to vote and deny the right to vote to
   individuals below the voting age. Often overlooked, young people under
   the voting age make up 20-50% of the population in some countries, and
   have no political representation. Worldwide voting ages are not
   consistent, fluctuating between countries and indeed within countries,
   usually between 15 (currently only in Iran) and 21.

   In all democratic countries, young people are excluded from voting in
   local and national elections, though the voting age is set generally at
   18. The option of qualifying by 'rite of passage' tests to certify a
   person's competence to vote responsibly is yet to be widely debated.
   One analogy is this: the 'right' to drive a motor vehicle is taken for
   granted, but few advocate that people of any age should be free to
   drive motor vehicles on public roads without first demonstrating
   practical skills and theoretical knowledge.

   There have been proposals to lower the national voting age to 16 in the
   United Kingdom, one of the arguments for which being that, as people of
   16 can marry, smoke, join the Army and pay taxes, for example, they
   should be allowed a say in the country's running. A similar argument
   supported the passage of the 26th Amendment to the United States
   Constitution in 1971, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. The
   argument stated that 18-year-olds were subject to the military
   (Vietnam-era) draft and that if one was expected to possibly die for
   one's country then one should certainly be permitted to help choose its
   leader.

Prisoners and felons

   Many countries have disenfranchisement of sentenced prisoners. In the
   United States, voting privileges are denied to prisoners by some
   states, but several other countries (including most countries of the
   European Union) allow all prisoners to vote, regardless of time served
   and nature of the crime. Some countries, such as Canada, allowed only
   prisoners serving a term of less than 2 years the right to vote.
   However in Canada, this restriction was found unconstitutional in 2002
   by the Supreme Court of Canada in Sauvé v. Canada (Chief Electoral
   Officer), and as a result, all prisoners were allowed to vote as of the
   2004 Canadian Election. 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. Another exemption from the right to vote
   is made by some countries for people in psychiatric facilities. In the
   United Kingdom, peers who are members of the House of Lords (all up
   until reforms in 1999) are also excluded from voting in general
   elections.

District of Columbia

   Residents of Washington DC have been excluded, in whole or in part,
   from voting since Congress took over the District of Columbia in 1801.
   Under the argument that residents of the District would exert undue
   influence over the government, the Congress, under the power asserted
   for it in the Constitution to legislate "in all cases whatsoever" over
   the District, has denied US citizens the right to vote and be
   represented, and to control their own local affairs, for the past 200
   years (since 1801).

History of Suffrage around the world

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 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 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 Māori seats increased to reflect Māori population.

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 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 restriction, 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.
       7% 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

   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 above 18 years of
       age from voting because of their age

Suffrage today

   Today, in most democracies, the ability to vote is granted as a birth
   right, without discrimination with regard to race, ethnicity, class or
   gender. Without any qualifying test (such as literacy), citizens or
   subjects above the voting age in a country 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).
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffrage"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
