Disfranchisement
Disfranchisement, also disenfranchisement or voter disqualification, is the restriction of suffrage of a person or group of people, or a practice that has the effect of preventing someone from exercising the right to vote. Disfranchisement can also refer to the revocation of power or control of a particular individual, community, or being to the natural amenity they have; that is to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, of some privilege or inherent immunity. Disfranchisement may be accomplished explicitly by law or implicitly through requirements applied in a discriminatory fashion, through intimidation, or by placing unreasonable requirements on voters for registration or voting.
High barriers to entry to the political competition can disenfranchise political movements.
Based on gender
Women used to be disfranchised. Feminism has successfully managed to claim voting rights in most countries, though material or social disfranchement continues widely.Based on age
Most countries or regions set a minimum voting age, and only enfranchise citizens older than this age. The most common voting age is 18, though some countries have minimum voting ages set as young as 16 or as old as 21.Based on residence or ethnicity
Australia
Voting in Australia is compulsory for resident citizens. Australian citizens who have been outside Australia for more than one but fewer than six years may excuse themselves from the requirement to vote in Australian elections while they remain outside Australia.Canada
Residency requirements for Canadian citizens were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2019. All Canadian citizens can vote in Canadian elections.Chile
Chileans living abroad may vote in presidential elections and presidential primaries, but not in elections to the national legislature or for regional government officials. The right to vote was extended to Chileans abroad in 2014 by Law No. 20.748; the bill was sponsored by Senators Isabel Allende Bussi, Soledad Alvear, Hernán Larraían Fernández and Patricio Walker Prieto. The law also allowed Chileans residing abroad to vote in the 2020 national plebiscite. Of nearly 60,000 registered overseas voters, 30,912 Chileans from 65 countries participated in the referendum.Denmark
Citizens of Denmark are in general not allowed to vote in Danish elections if they reside outside the country for more than two years. Danish citizens that reside permanently outside Denmark lose their right to vote.India
Non-resident Indian citizens may vote from abroad by applying to be registered as non-resident electors as long as they have not obtained citizenship in another country. They must be "absent from the country owing to employment, education etc, not acquired citizenship of any other country and are otherwise eligible to be registered as a voter in the address mentioned in your passport."Norway
The Norwegian constitution of 1814, paragraph 53, stated that anyone being in service of another power, buying or selling votes, or being convicted to forced labor would be disfranchised. Paragraph 53 was repealed by the parliament in June 2022. Citizens residing outside Norway for more than 10 years may not vote unless they make an application.Svalbard
The 2023 election for the Longyearbyen Community Council was held under new rules imposed by the Norwegian government, wherein voters had to have Norwegian citizenship or have lived in mainland Norway for 3 years. These rules disenfranchised an estimated one-third of the voter roll compared to the previous election in 2019, including almost the entire community of non-Norwegians living in the town. The previous rules allowed anyone who had resided on Svalbard itself for 3 years to vote.United Kingdom
British citizens are allowed to vote at home with no time limit. Until 2024, they were not allowed to vote in UK General Elections or referendums if they had resided outside the country for more than 15 years.In February 2018, the Overseas Electors Bill was presented to Parliament, with a view to abolishing the 15-year limit and the requirement to have registered to vote before leaving the UK. The Bill, which ran out of time due to the 2019 general election, would have granted all British expatriates the unlimited right to vote, as long as they have lived in the UK at some point in their lives. The issue became a hotly debated topic among British expatriates who have lived in other EU Member States for more than 15 years and were thus barred from voting in the referendum on European Union membership, despite arguably being more affected by the result than British people living in the UK.
The Conservative Party pledged to abolish what the called the "arbitrary 15-year limit" in their manifesto for the 2019 general election, in which they were subsequently elected. The change was implemented in 2024.
United States
Efforts made by Southern United States to prevent black citizens voting began after the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877. They were enacted by Southern states at the turn of the 20th century. Their actions were designed to thwart the objective of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, enacted in 1870 to protect the suffrage of freedmen.Democrats were alarmed by a late 19th-century alliance between Republicans and Populists that cost them some elections in North Carolina. Democrats added to previous efforts and achieved widespread disfranchisement by law: from 1890 to 1908, Southern state legislatures passed new constitutions, constitutional amendments, and laws that made voter registration and voting more difficult, especially when administered by white staff in a discriminatory way. They succeeded in disenfranchising most of the black citizens, as well as many poor whites in the South, and voter rolls dropped dramatically in each state. The Republican Party was nearly eliminated in the region for decades, and the Democrats established one-party control throughout the southern states.
In 1912, the Republican Party was split when Theodore Roosevelt ran against the party nominee, Taft. In the South by this time, the Republican Party had been hollowed out by the disfranchisement of African Americans, who were largely excluded from voting. Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected as the first southern president since 1856. He was re-elected in 1916, in a much closer presidential contest. During his first term, Wilson satisfied the request of Southerners in his cabinet and instituted overt racial segregation throughout federal government workplaces, as well as racial discrimination in hiring. During World War I, American military forces were segregated, with black soldiers poorly trained and equipped.
Disfranchisement had far-reaching effects in Congress, where the Democratic Solid South enjoyed "about 25 extra seats in Congress for each decade between 1903 and 1953". Also, the Democratic dominance in the South meant that southern Senators and Representatives became entrenched in Congress. They favored seniority privileges in Congress, which became the standard by 1920, and Southerners controlled chairmanships of important committees, as well as leadership of the national Democratic Party. During the Great Depression, legislation establishing numerous national social programs were passed without the representation of African Americans, leading to gaps in program coverage and discrimination against them in operations. In addition, because black Southerners were not listed on local voter rolls, they were automatically excluded from serving in local courts. Juries were all white across the South.
Political enfranchisement expanded with passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which authorized the federal government to monitor voter registration practices and elections where populations were historically underrepresented, and to enforce constitutional voting rights. The challenge to voting rights has continued into the 21st century, as shown by numerous court cases in 2016 alone, though attempts to restrict voting rights for political advantage have not been confined to the Southern states. Another method of seeking political advantage through the voting system is the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries, as was the case of North Carolina, which in January 2018 was declared by a federal court to be unconstitutional. Such cases are expected to reach the Supreme Court.
Recent
State governments have had the right to establish requirements for voters, voter registration, and conduct of elections. Since the founding of the nation, legislatures have gradually expanded the franchise, from certain propertied white men to almost universal adult suffrage of age 18 and over, with the notable exclusion of people convicted of some crimes. Expansion of suffrage was made on the basis of lowering property requirements, granting suffrage to freedmen and restoring suffrage in some states to free people of color following the American Civil War, to women in 1920, all Native Americans in 1924, and people over the age of 18 in the 1970s. Public interest groups focus on fighting disfranchisement in the United States amid rising concerns that new restrictions on voting are become more common.Washington, D.C.
When the District of Columbia was established as the national capital, with lands contributed by Maryland and Virginia, its residents were not allowed to vote for local or federal representatives, in an effort to prevent the district from endangering the national government. Congress had a committee, appointed from among representatives elected to the House, that administered the city and district in lieu of local or state government. Residents did not vote for federal representatives who were appointed to oversee them.In 1804, US Congress cancelled holding US presidential elections in Washington, D.C. or allowing residents to vote in them. Amendment 23 was passed by Congress and ratified in 1964 to restore the ability of District residents to vote in presidential elections.
In 1846, the portion of Washington, D.C. contributed from Virginia was "retrocessioned" to Virginia to protect slavery. People residing there, vote in local, Virginia and US elections.
Congress uses the same portion of the US Constitution to exclusively manage local and State level law for the citizens of Washington, D.C. and US military bases in the US. Until 1986, military personnel living on bases were considered to have special status as national representatives and prohibited from voting in elections where their bases were located. In 1986, Congress passed a law to enable US military personnel living on bases in the US to vote in local and state elections.
The position of non-voting delegate to Congress from the District was reestablished in 1971. The delegate cannot vote for bills before the House, nor floor votes, but may vote for some procedural and committee matters. In 1973, the District of Columbia Home Rule Act reestablished local government after a hundred-year gap, with regular local elections for mayor and other posts. They do not elect a US senator. People seeking standard representation for the 600,000 District of Columbia residents describe their status as being disfranchised in relation to the federal government. They do vote in presidential elections.
Until 2009, no other NATO or OECD country had disfranchised citizens of their respective national capitals for national legislature elections. No US state prohibits residents of capitals from voting in state elections either, and their cities are contained within regular representative state and congressional districts.