9781422277683

The Road to Universal Suffrage

T oday universal suffrage—the right of all adult citizens to vote—is regarded as a requirement for any democracy. In the past, however, democracies excluded entire classes of people. In 1789, when George Washington was elected the first president of the United States, voting was limited to adult white males who owned property. By the 1820s, most property requirements had been eliminated. Still, neither women nor blacks could vote. African-American men finally received the right to vote in 1870, with the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But southern states soon found ways to prevent blacks from exercising their voting rights, including poll taxes and literacy tests. Only with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would these barriers finally be removed. By the late 1800s, women had limited voting rights in several coun- tries. In 1893 New Zealand became the first nation to extend full voting rights to women. The United States achieved that milestone in 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. British women wouldn’t receive equal voting rights with men until 1928. In France, female suffrage began in 1944. Switzerland didn’t grant women the right to vote until 1971.

Suffragists picket near the White House in 1917, demanding the right to vote. American women would be granted the vote with ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

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Democracy: The People’s Government