The 6 Types of Suffrage and their characteristics

Suffrage is the basic right of any democratic society, because 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, for Therefore, they have the right to freely choose the person who will be in charge of making decisions regarding 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 passed by a series of vicissitudes that have made it stagger many times throughout its short history. It is not our intention in this article to take a historical journey through modern democracy, but we do want to point out what are the existing types of suffrage and that have existed. Let's see them.

The essential characteristics of suffrage

The word suffrage comes from the Latin

suffragium, that is to say, vote. The idea involves a group of people who, through their personal and non-transferable vote, make a decision that concerns the whole. As we have already said, it is the basis of a democratic society; without suffrage we could not speak of democracy, but of other types of regimes, such as dictatorship, oligarchy, etc.

Before going into the existing types of suffrage, we believe it is necessary to dwell for a moment on the essential characteristics that suffrage must have in order to be considered legitimate. Namely:

1. must be universal

Everyone 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 access the vote.

2. 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.

• Related article: "What is Political Psychology?"

3. must be direct

That is, voters must vote for the elected candidate directly, so there can be no intermediate step whereby those chosen carry out another vote to choose a final candidate.

types of suffrage

Based on this, let's briefly describe the types of suffrage that 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 masculine suffrage or census.

For a country to be considered modernly democratic, the type of suffrage it must hold is the first on our list: universal suffrage.

1. The universal suffrage

We call Universal suffrage to the one who does not hinder any citizen when it comes to voting and who recognizes each and every one of their right to vote, regardless of gender, race, religion, ideology, economic situation, etc This is, of course, the model for all modern democratic countries.

The concept of Universal suffrage first appeared during the French Revolution, when, in the Constitution of 1793, this form of voting is 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, which was a census holder; that is, restricted to a specific census. We talk about it in the next point.

• You may be interested in: "Greek democracy: what it is and what were its characteristics"

2. The 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 for people included in a list or census, usually related to status and personal wealth. Currently, in no democratic country is this type of suffrage still in force, since its restrictive nature goes against the very foundations of democracy.

3. compulsory suffrage

As indicated by the nomenclature itself, it is the suffrage 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.

• Related article: "The 5 ages of History (and their characteristics)"

5. male suffrage

It is the type of suffrage that was customary for most of the history of European democracy. It is an elective system in which only adult men can vote. It is important to note that male suffrage can be universal or census (remember the case of the French Revolution).

6. women's suffrage

The great struggle of historical feminism has been to obtain the right to vote. In fact, the term of women's suffrage, unlike that of male suffrage, does not refer to an electoral system in which only women vote, but to it's about the idea that women also have the right to vote.

The first women's suffragette movements occurred in the 19th century, but it was at the end of the century and during the first decades of the 20th when the protests became more acute worldwide. There was no turning back, and the different countries began to approve the female vote.

The first worldwide was New Zealand, whose women have been able to exercise their right since 1893. Ecuador was the first Latin American country to approve the female vote in 1929, and Spain achieved it in 1931, during the Second Republic. Interestingly, the last European countries to allow women to vote were Switzerland, whose women's suffrage was not approved until 1971, and Liechtenstein, much more recently: 1984.