Electorate

I

Introduction

Electorate, term applied to all of the eligible voters in a political democracy. If a substantial majority of the mature citizens of a community are allowed to participate in elections, and if no compulsion or restraint is involved in voting, that community is considered to have a democratic electorate.

II

Historical

Since the beginning of the 18th century, there has been a struggle to expand the electorate in many countries to include new groups or classes of citizens or subjects. Many criteria have been used throughout history to exclude persons from the electorate, the principal ones including citizenship, property, religion, sex, age, residence, race, education, and class. In Great Britain and the United States, religious criteria were removed by the end of the 19th century. Since then, they have come to be legally eliminated in general.

III

Gender

Restrictions on the basis of gender were ended in the United States with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, and in Great Britain with enactment of the “flapper vote” law in 1928. Women were enfranchised in Germany under the Weimar Constitution in 1919, and the Soviet Union removed gender restrictions after the Russian Revolution of 1917. In Spain, women were enfranchised in 1931, and in Italy and France women won the right to vote after World War II (1939-1945). In Italy and France the participation of women in the wartime resistance movement against the Germans was an important factor in winning the franchise. Full enfranchisement came in Japan in 1946 under United States occupation.

IV

Age

Until 1971 the age level for voting in the United States was determined by individual states. Although most states had established a minimum voting age of 21, a few had minimum ages as low as 18. In 1971 the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution established the voting age at 18 for federal, state, and local elections.

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