Definition
Suffrage is the right to vote in elections that choose representatives or decide public questions. It defines who counts as a full political member of a community — who has a formal say in how the community is governed.
The history of suffrage is a history of expansion. Voting rights were long restricted by property, sex, race, religion, or age, and were widened only through sustained political struggle, generation by generation.
Why it matters
How it works
Suffrage converts a population into an electorate. Each extension of the franchise enlarges the group of people whose preferences a government must answer to, shifting policy toward newly enfranchised interests.
Because voting is power, the franchise has always been contested. Existing voters and elites have resisted extension, fearing dilution of their influence, while excluded groups have organized to claim it. The result is the gradual, uneven, and sometimes reversible widening from narrow property-based suffrage to universal adult suffrage.