The suffrage universal is the right of all adult citizens to vote and voted beings . Strictly speaking, all States establish constitutional requirements for the exercise of political citizenship, such as minimum age and military conscription. The substantial difference from universal suffrage to restricted suffrage is that it does not place social requirements, such as minimum education or minimum income, to guarantee people the right to participate in the electoral process.
For some, this may seem little, but it is not. The right to vote and to be voted without being restricted by socioeconomic limitations allows the different demands and needs of the different groups that make up a society to be taken into account by law and public service formulators.
Read also: Human Rights – category of basic rights of all citizens
What is universal suffrage?
Universal suffrage is the full extension of political rights to all adult citizens in a country , without any form of restriction by factors such as income, education, gender or ethnicity. It covers the right to choose representatives and to stand for election. The institution of universal suffrage means that, in a given country, there will be no economic, intellectual, professional, sexist or ethnic requirements for exercising the right to vote.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) emphasizes that universal suffrage is a basic human right . The expansion of political citizenship is a vector for the improvement of democracies , crucial for modern states to equalize the conflicts that develop in the midst of the public interest and to improve public policies and public services that they offer to society.
For example, in Brazil before 1988, the right to public health was restricted to formal workers who contributed to social security, the others depended on the charity of Santas Casas de Misericórdia or were relegated to their own luck. With extensive discussion with many sectors of civil society, the 88 Constitution established the right to vote for all and enshrined health as a universal right.
From then on, the Unified Health System was structured , one of the largest public health systems in the world, the target of improvements over time. It is a State policy whose improvement over the governments is related to the universality of the right to vote, since the main users of the system vote and, therefore, their demands are taken into account in the consolidation of health policies.
Universal suffrage allows all citizens to participate in the elections, being able to vote or be voted.
Types of suffrage
The types of suffrage can be categorized according to the type of political-electoral participation (direct or indirect) and the extent of the right to political participation, which can be conferred on everyone or can be limited by requirements and restrictions, such as ethnicity , education, income.
- Direct suffrage: the voting system is individual, each voter chooses their representatives and all votes have equal value. This is the voting system in force in Brazil after redemocratization.
- Indirect suffrage: the voting system is collegiate, each electoral college chooses representatives. That was the voting system in force here during the Military Dictatorship.
- Racial or aristocratic suffrage: restriction of political rights due to ethnic motivation. The limitation criterion is anchored in the person’s origin as well as in biological characteristics. In Brasil Império and even in Brasil República before 1988, indigenous people could not vote. Some authors include the prohibition of female voting in this category.
- Capacitive suffrage: restriction of political rights due to intellectual motivation, determined according to the level of education. In Brazil, for example, illiterates were only able to vote since 1985.
- Census or pecuniary suffrage: restriction of political rights for economic reasons, linked to the payment of taxes and / or land ownership.
Don’t stop now … There’s more after the publicity;)
Women’s suffrage
Women’s suffrage, that is, women’s right to vote and to run for office , was hard won. The suffragette movement , also known as the first wave of feminism , emerged in England in the 19th century and reached the world in the 20th century, changing the electoral process and the political landscape of many countries. Women began to claim the right to vote because the fact that they had no political rights prevented them from gaining legal and social rights . They had no right to divorce, to own property in their name, to formal education.
These demands, which arose among middle and upper class women, added to the demands of poor and working-class women, who had a double working day, lower wages than men, precarious living conditions. All of them had in common the fact that they could not vote, and the suppression of this right influenced the others, since politicians guide their activities according to those who elected them.
In England the movement started out peaceful , with marches, pamphlets, letters to parliamentarians. The activist Emmeline Pankhurst , leader of the suffragettes , consolidated another form of activism , with more incisive and sometimes violent acts. The death of Professor Emily Davison, in 1913, gave international notoriety to the movement, which, through the United States, gained a new horizon of reach.
English suffragette Emily Davison at her graduation (1908). She is considered a martyr for the suffragite movement.
The first country to institute the female vote was New Zealand, in 1893; the second, Finland, in 1906; England did it in 1918; the USA, in 1920; Brazil, in 1932. During the 20th century, especially in the post-war period, several countries institutionalized the female vote. The last to do so was Saudi Arabia, in 2015.
See also: Social movements – collective actions for a social cause
Suffrage in Brazil
In Brazil, the first election took place in the colonial period , in 1532, for the Municipality of São Vicente. Until 1821 elections were held only within municipalities and there were no parties. From 1824, already in the empire , the election of deputies and senators was instituted. Voting was census , that is, limited to men of means, as was the right to run for election.
Nobles, bureaucrats, wealthy merchants, plantation owners, men over 25 years of age and a minimum income of 100,000 réis a year voted, which, converted to the real, would give more than one million. To run for election, the ceiling was even more severe, candidates for deputies should have an annual income of 400,000 reis, and candidates for senators, 800,000 reis. Women, Indians, Negroes, soldiers could not vote, much less run for office.
Even after the proclamation of the republic , the vote remained census , that is, possessing was a requirement to vote. In the new government system, women, the illiterate, low-ranking soldiers, priests, indigenous people and the poor were excluded from political citizenship.
In 1932, during the government of Getúlio Vargas , the Superior Electoral Court and the Regional Electoral Courts were created. The Brazilian Electoral Code was issued, which instituted the secret vote and also the female vote , after widespread pressure from Brazilian feminists who participated in the suffrage movement. However, in that first moment, female suffrage did not reach illiterate or poor women.
Since the proclamation of the republic in 1889, Brazil has gone through two dictatorial moments. The first occurred during the government of Getúlio Vargas, from 1937 to 1945. This period was called the Estado Novo , a new constitution was granted, the Congress was closed, the parties were extinguished, interventionists were appointed to govern the states, and the elections were suspended. The second moment was the Military Dictatorship , from 1964 to 1985.
During this period, a new Constitution was granted, Congress was dissolved on three occasions, civil liberties were suppressed, bipartisanship was adopted, but elections continued for some positions, which did not include majority positions (governor, president of the republic) . The majority elections were only direct again since 1985, after popular pressure from the Diretas Já movement, led, among others, by deputy Ulysses Guimarães, also one of the great leaders of the National Constituent Assembly that culminated in the Citizen Constitution.
Demonstration calling for direct election for president of the republic in the plenary of the Chamber of Deputies (1984). [1]
Universal suffrage is foreseen in article 14 of the 1988 Constitution , also called Citizen Constitution, which, in addition to universal suffrage, reaffirms the right to secret ballot, that is, immune to constraints and coercion, direct, that is, personal and non-transferable, and with equivalent value for all citizens, with no votes more important than others. Voting is mandatory for people over 18 and under 70. Voting is optional for people over 16 and under 18, over 70, and illiterate.
Suffrage and the French Revolution
The French Revolution is one of the great events in history, it changed not only the political configuration of the country in which it occurred but also reverberated in modern states around the world.
It brought political participation to the center of the debate , questioned the privileges of the aristocracy and the intertwined relationship between Church and State, and popularized the idea of universal suffrage. The principles of freedom, equality and fraternity, political citizenship for all without social and economic distinctions, the valorization of the state’s secularism are some elements of the legacy of republican values that this historical movement left to the world.
Universal male suffrage, freedom of the press, freedom of association and right to work are values of the French Revolution.
The revolutionaries removed the absolutist monarch Louis XVI, founding the First French Republic by means of universal male suffrage , something unprecedented in the world. However, although the ideals of this movement abolished economic and intellectual restrictions for men, women were excluded from the process, they were considered “passive citizens”, influenced by their proximity to religious leaders, in addition, some considered domestic duties as incompatible with exercise the right to vote.
Political activist Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793) edited the Declaration on the Rights of Women and Citizens (1791) in response to the Declaration on the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789), which excluded women from political citizenship. As a result of her challenge, she was sentenced to death. The right to vote for women in France was only enshrined in 1945, when women’s votes were already a reality in several countries.
Access also: Feminism – social movement that originated with the action of Olympe de Gouges
Difference between vote and suffrage
Suffrage consists of the right to vote (active suffrage) and to be voted (passive suffrage). Voting is the instrument for exercising this right , that is, the choice of political representatives for elective positions. Suffrage is the right to participate in the electoral process, the vote is the mechanism through which that right is exercised. Suffrage is the power of citizens to participate in the sovereignty of a country, the vote is the instrument to legitimize the act of conferring this power on chosen representatives.