Qualifications for Suffrage

Recall that suffrage or franchise is the right of adult citizens of a nation to vote in an election. In every country there is always an electoral law which stipulates the qualifications of electors and those to be elected. The process of enfranchisement is therefore the way each citizen fulfills the conditions/law that make him or her eligible as a voter.

Qualification for Suffrage or Franchise

1. Citizenship: Only citizens of a country are allowed to vote. Aliens are disallowed from voting and being voted for.
2. Age: There is usually a voting age, eighteen years in some cases and twenty-one in others.
3. Residential qualification: Voters are required to be in continuous residence in a constituency before they can be allowed to vote. This period may be as little as three months or as much as five years or more.
4. Tax payment: Tax payment is a condition for voting or being voted for in some elections.
5. Educational background: Regulations may stipulate minimum educational qualifications for those seeking elective offices. illiterates are thus usually barred from contesting or seeking high government posts.
6. Criminal records: Those with criminal records or prisoners are usually disallowed from contesting elections
7. Bankruptcy: are known to be bankrupt may not be allowed to vote or be voted for.
8. Sanity: Persons of unsound mind are usually excluded from voting or being voted for
9. Registration: Only those who have registered for elections can vote and be voted for.

Forms of Exclusion from Suffrage

1. Religion: In the aftermath of the Reformation it was common in European countries for people of disfavored religious denominations to be denied civil and political rights, often including the right to vote, to stand for election or to sit in parliament.
2. Wealth, tax class, social class: Until the nineteenth century, many Western proto-democracies had property qualifications in their electoral laws; e.g. only landowners could vote (because the only tax for such countries was the property tax), or the voting rights were weighted according to the amount of taxes paid (as in the Prussian three-class franchise).
3. Knowledge: Sometimes the right to vote has been limited to people who had achieved a certain level of education or passed a certain test. In some US states, "literacy tests" were previously implemented to exclude those who were illiterate.
4. Race: Various countries, usually countries with a dominant race within a wider population, have historically denied the vote to people of particular races, or to all but the dominant race. In southern states of the United States of America before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, poll taxes, literacy and other tests were used to disenfranchise African-Americans.
5. Age: All modern democracies require voters to meet age qualifications to vote. Worldwide voting ages are not consistent, differing between countries and even within countries, though the range usually varies between 16 and 21 years.
6. Criminality: Many countries restrict the voting rights of convicted criminals. Some countries, and some U.S. states, also deny the right to vote to those convicted of serious crimes even after they are released from prison.
7. Residency: Sometimes citizens become ineligible to vote because they are no longer resident in their country of citizenship. For example, Australian citizens who have been outside Australia for more than one and fewer than six years may excuse themselves from the requirement to vote in Australian elections while they remain outside Australia (voting in Australia is compulsory for resident citizens).
8. Nationality: In most countries, suffrage is limited to citizens and, in many cases, permanent residents of that country. However, some members of supra-national organisations such as the Commonwealth of Nations and the European Union have granted voting rights to citizens of all countries within that organisation.
9. Naturalization: In some countries, naturalized citizens do not have the right to vote or to be a candidate, either permanently or for a determined period. In France, the 1889 Nationality Law barred those who had acquired the French nationality by naturalization or marriage from voting, and from eligibility and access to several public jobs. In 1938 the delay was reduced to five years.
10. Function: In France, an 1872 law, rescinded only by a 1945 decree, prohibited all army personnel from voting. In many countries with a presidential system of government a person is forbidden to be a legislator and an official of the executive branch at the same time.