Suffrage is the basic right of any democratic society, since through it popular sovereignty is recognized, which is the basis of democratic foundations. Popular sovereignty includes the idea that whoever governs a state does so on behalf of its citizens who, therefore, have the right to freely choose the person who will be in charge of making decisions related to the community.
However, everyone knows that the democratic situation has not always been the same. To begin with, modern democratic states are barely two centuries old; Not only that, but European democracy, born with the American and French Revolutions, has gone through a series of vicissitudes that have made it falter many times throughout its short history. It is not our intention in this article to take a historical tour through modern democracy, but we do want to point out what they are. the types of suffrage that exist and have existed Let’s see them.
The word suffrage comes from Latin suffragiumthat is to say, vote, vote. The idea involves a group of people who, through their personal and non-transferable vote, make a decision that affects the whole. As we have already said, it is the basis of democratic society; Without suffrage we could not speak of democracy, but of other types of regimes, such as dictatorship, oligarchy, etc.
Before entering into the existing types of suffrage, we believe it is necessary to pause for a moment on the essential characteristics that suffrage must have to be considered legitimate. Namely:
1. It must be universal
All people must be able to participate in the vote Later we will see that this all It may be relative, since voters may be subject to a census. In any case, all the names included in this census must be able to vote.
2. It must be secret
Of course, the right to secret ballot is fundamental to the functioning of a good democracy. No other citizen has to know your vote, and you have no obligation to share it with anyone.
3. It should be direct
That is, voters must vote for the elected candidate directly, so there cannot be an intermediate step by which those elected carry out another vote to choose a final candidate.
Types of suffrage
Having said this, let’s briefly describe the types of suffrage we can find. It is necessary to point out that some of them no longer exist or are concentrated in a few countries, such as, for example, male suffrage or the census.
For a country to be considered modernly democratic, the type of suffrage it must have is the first on our list: universal suffrage.
1. Universal suffrage
We call Universal suffrage to one who does not hinder any citizen when it comes to voting and who recognizes each and every one of them their right to vote, without distinguishing by gender, race, religion, ideology, economic situation, etc. This is, of course, the model of all modern democratic countries.
The concept of Universal suffrage It first appeared during the French Revolution, when, in the Constitution of 1793, this form of voting was approved. However, calling it universal in this case is somewhat ambiguous, since women were absolutely excluded from it. Therefore, the reference to universal is produced by comparison with the previously approved one, which was census-based; that is, restricted to a specific census. We talk about it in the next point.
2. Census or restricted suffrage
It was the first voting model of the first democracies. It is a suffrage system that only contemplates the right to vote of people included in a list or census, usually related to status and personal wealth. Currently, in no democratic country this type of suffrage is still in force since its restrictive nature goes against the very foundations of democracy.
3. Mandatory suffrage
As the nomenclature itself indicates, it is the vote in which the right to vote becomes an obligation This type of suffrage is designed, among other things, to avoid the phenomenon of citizen abstention when voting and threats to certain groups so that they do not vote.
4. Voluntary suffrage
Unlike the previous one, It is a voluntary vote by the citizen Thus, suffrage is seen as a right, not as an obligation. In this type of vote, absenteeism when voting is more common.
5. Male suffrage
It is the type of suffrage that was common for most of the history of European democracy. It is an elective system in which only adult men can vote. It is important to highlight that male suffrage can be universal or census-based (remember the case of the French Revolution).
The great struggle of historical feminism has been obtaining the right to vote. In fact, the term of women’s suffrageunlike that of male suffragedoes not refer to an electoral system in which only women vote, but rather it’s about the idea that women also have the right to vote
The first women’s suffrage movements occurred in the 19th century, but it was at the end of the century and during the first decades of the 20th when protests worsened worldwide. There was no going back, and different countries began to approve the female vote.
The first in the world was New Zealand, whose women have been able to exercise their right since 1893. Ecuador was the first Latin American country to approve women’s suffrage in 1929, and Spain achieved it in 1931, during the Second Republic. Curiously, the last European countries to allow women to vote were Switzerland, whose women’s suffrage was not approved until 1971, and Liechtenstein, at a much more recent date: 1984.
