Universal suffrage (also general suffrage or common suffrage) consists of the extension of suffrage to all adults, without distinction as to race, sex, belief, or social status. This would include right to vote or participate in government, most often in a democracy.
In the first modern democracies only a limited number of people had a say in the running of the government - for example in Britain only landowners had the right to vote from 1265. In all modern democracies the number of people who could vote increased gradually with time. The 19th century featured movements advocating universal male suffrage - the extension to all males regardless of social standing or race. The democratic movement of the late 19th century, unifying Liberals and Social Democrats, particularly in northern Europe, used the slogan Equal and Common Suffrage. The Movement for Universal Suffrage consisted of a social, economic and political movement aimed at extending suffrage to people of all races.
Expanding suffrage
The first movements toward universal suffrage (or manhood suffrage) occurred in the early 19th century, and focused on removing property requirements for voting. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the focus of universal suffrage became the removal of restrictions against women having the right to vote.
Several countries which had enacted universal suffrage had their normal legal process, or their existence, interrupted during the Second World War.
Many societies in the past have denied people the right to vote on the basis of race or ethnicity. For example, non-whites could not vote in national elections during apartheid-era South Africa, until the system came to an end with the first free multi-party elections in 1994. In the pre-Civil Rights Era American South, blacks often technically had the right to vote, but various means prevented many of them from exercising that right. The Ku Klux Klan formed after the American Civil War, largely to intimidate blacks and to prevent them from voting.
Other disenfranchisement
Some so-called "universal" suffrage systems still exclude some potential voters. For example, some jurisdictions deny the vote to various categories of convicted criminals or the mentally ill, and almost all jurisdictions deny the vote to non-citizen residents and citizens under the age of 18. Similarly, some systems of "universal" suffrage, including some of those below, have excluded those who were too poor to pay any (direct) taxes, or received public assistance.
Universal suffrage in the world
There is some friendly nationalist competition with regard to which nation (or state) that was first with full-blown democratic suffrage. Fans of the United States, New Zealand, South Australia, Finland, France and Norway all have their arguments for why their favorite nation is to be seen as the front-runner, which is indicated in the table below.
States have granted (and revoked) universal suffrage at various times:
(in chronological order)
- New Jersey -- 1776 - 1807 (first state including women; but property requirement (ie. not universal suffrage) & enforcement disputed)
- France 1848 -- (first nation to use universal male suffrage; but 1852-70 used for referendums but not parliamentary elections, and entirely supressed 1940-44; women not included until 1944)
- New Zealand -- 1893 (first nation to include women, although certain inequalities with Maori votes persisted)
- South Australia -- 1894 (including women, first state to also allow women as candidates; thus making South Australia the first in the world to do so. Voting rights still not granted to Indigenous Australians; this electoral system did not apply to all Australia, only to the State of South Australia.)
- Western Australia – 1899 (including women, second state in Australia to grant universal suffrage, later followed by New South Wales in 1902, Tasmania in 1903, Queensland in 1905, and Victoria in 1908)
- Australia – 1901 (including women, the first time citizens of all states in Australia are given the chance to vote on a federal level; Aborigines gained the right in 1967)
- Grand Duchy of Finland -- 1906 as an autonomous Grand Duchy. (including women, first nation to also allow women as candidates. Finland became independent with same Universal Suffrage in 1917.)
- Norway -- 1913 (including women, first independent nation to also allow women as candidates.)
- Canada -- 1918 (last province to enact women's suffrage was Quebec in 1940; status Indians gained the right to vote in 1960)
- Estonia -- 1918
- Ireland -- 1918
- After the Central Powers' defeat in World War I
- Luxembourg - 1919
- The Netherlands - 1919
- United States -- 1920 (though unenforced with regards to African Americans in the South until 1965)
- Sweden -- 1921
- Lithuania -- 1922
- Romania -- 1923
- United Kingdom -- 1928 (Northern Ireland -- 1968)
- Sri Lanka (as Ceylon) -- 1931 (Indian Tamils disenfranchised 1949)
- Spain -- 1931 (revoked during Franco era, 1939-1975)
- Turkey -- 1934
- Italy -- 1945
- Japan -- 1945
- Israel -- 1948 (universal suffrage since independence)
- Belgium -- 1948
- India -- 1950 (as part of its constitution)
- Argentina -- 1951
- Greece -- 1952
- Malaysia -- 1955 (The victory of Union Party convinces the British to grant Malaysia's Independence in 1957)
- Colombia -- 1956
- Switzerland -- 1971 (introduction of women's suffrage at the federal level; for cantonal elections this was not completed until 1990)
- Portugal -- 1976
- Liechtenstein -- 1984
- South Africa -- 1994 (white women's suffrage in 1930)
- Iraq -- 2005
Women voting
The first women's suffrage (with the same property qualifications as for men) was accidentally granted in New Jersey in 1776 (the word "people" was used instead of "men") 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 latter half of the nineteenth century, starting with South Australia in 1861.
The first unrestricted women's suffrage in terms of voting rights (women were not initially permitted to stand for election) in a major country was granted in New Zealand. The women's suffrage bill was adopted mere weeks before the general election of 1893.
The first to grant universal suffrage and also allow women to stand for parliament was South Australia, in 1894.
See also
