Suffrage

Introduction to Suffrage

Suffrage, right or privilege of voting to elect public officials and to adopt or reject legislation. Suffrage is a political institution dating from ancient times. In the city-states of Greece, all freemen (who constituted a minority of the population) were expected to take part in the government of their city. In Rome the common citizens, called plebs, were granted the right to elect tribunes to intercede for them when they felt that they had been unjustly treated by the government.

The idea that the people under a government should have a voice in selecting its leaders did not gain substantial support until the 17th and 18th centuries when philosophers of the Enlightenment argued that self-government is a natural right of every person and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. This idea has influenced the modern view of suffrage but has not entirely superseded the competing view that suffrage is a political privilege that is granted by law and properly is subject to qualifications. Although the trend of modern governments has been to liberalize the qualifications for suffrage, many still apply some restrictions besides the obvious standards of citizenship and an age limit, which usually ranges between 18 and 21 years. In a few countries women do not vote. Literacy is often a qualification, and in many countries persons convicted of a serious crime are deprived of voting rights.

The U.S. Constitution originally specified that each state would determine the qualifications for its voters; however, amendments to the Constitution have prohibited any state from denying suffrage to any citizen by virtue of race or sex or to require the payment of a poll tax as a condition for voting in a national election. Prior to the 1970s, the age limit for voting in the majority of states was 21 (although Georgia, Kentucky, Alaska, and Hawaii had lower age limits). The U.S. Supreme Court in 1970 ruled that 18-year-old citizens have the right to vote in federal elections; the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1971, extended suffrage to 18-year-olds in all elections. In all states persons who have been convicted of felonies subsequently lose the right to vote.

Some states long required voters to pass literacy tests; however, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 barred literacy tests and other devices to determine qualification of voters in states where less than half the population was registered to vote in 1964 or voted in the national election of that year. In 1970, amendments to the Civil Rights Act banned state literacy tests and also required that ballots be printed in languages other than English in areas where a substantial minority of the local population is literate in another language.” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

• Information about Suffrage in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia

Guide to Suffrage

About Voting and Elections

Election, Voter Registration, Electoral Systems, Election Types, How Voters Decide, Electoral Realignments, Electorate (including Electorate Historical, Electorate Gender, Electorate Race and Social Position, Electorate Property and Poll Tax and Residence) and Electronic Voting (including Electronic Voting Origins and Electronic Voting Problems).

Suffrage in Constitutional Law

From the Comparative Constitutions Project: Suffrage is the civil right to vote, or the exercise of that right.