Political Mechanisms
Universal Suffrage
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Universal suffrage is the principle that all adult citizens should have the right to vote, regardless of property, sex, race, or other status. New Zealand became the first self-governing country to grant it to women in national elections.
Facts
Origin YearNew Zealand's 1893 Electoral Act is the first instance of a self-governing country giving all adult women the vote nationally without a property qualification; other countries and groups reached universal suffrage at later dates. Founding ContextExtended gradually from property-restricted male voting across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; New Zealand became the first self-governing country to grant women the vote in 1893, and universal adult suffrage without regard to race became a defining late-twentieth-century achievement, most prominently with the end of apartheid disenfranchisement in South Africa in 1994. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Advocated By
Chartism, Movements Chartism's People's Charter of 1838 demanded universal male suffrage.
Influenced By
Levellers, Movements Their demand for manhood suffrage in the Agreement of the People is treated by historians as an early articulation of the principle later generations called universal suffrage.
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