universal suffrage

Universal suffrage (or franchise) ensures the right to vote for as many people who are bound by a government's laws as possible, as supported by the "one person, one vote" principle. For many, the term universal suffrage assumes the exclusion of youth and non-citizens (among others), while some insist that much more inclusion is needed before suffrage can be called universal. Democratic theorists, especially those hoping to achieve more universal suffrage, support presumptive inclusion, where the legal system would protect the voting rights of all subjects unless the government can clearly prove that disenfranchisement is necessary. History In the first modern democracies, governments restricted the vote to those with property and wealth, which almost always meant a minority of the male population. In some jurisdictions, other restrictions existed, such as requiring voters to practice a given religion. In all modern democracies, the number of people who could vote has increased progressively with time. The 19th century saw many movements advocating "universal [male] suffrage", most notably in Europe, Great Britain and North America. Female suffrage was largely ignored until the latter half of the century, when movements began to thrive; the first of these was in New Zealand, in which all adult women of all ethnicities gained the right to vote in 1893. From there, the movement for the idea of universal suffrage which included women's suffrage spread across British colonies and beyond. In the United States, after the principle of "One person, one vote" was established in the early 1960s by the U.S. Supreme Court under Earl Warren, the U.S. Congress, together with the Warren Court, continued to protect and expand the voting rights of all Americans, especially African Americans, through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965 and several Supreme Court rulings. In addition, the term "suffrage" is also associated specifically with women's suffrage in the United States; a movement to extend the franchise to women began in the mid-19th century and culminated in 1920, when the United States ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing the right of women to vote. It would be 1928 before voting rights were guaranteed to all women in the UK.