Today every person over the age of 18 (excepting those in prison) has the opportunity today to vote in a General Election. In Britain an election of the national government has to be held every 5 years or less.
We in Britain, and indeed throughout most of the World, accept this as a human right. Democracy has been around for a long time – the Greeks invented the word – and yet in Britain (as most other democracries at the time) the vote was restricted to those having adequate property and wealth, ie. around 10% of the male population until Victorian times. Even then, when electoral reform started, it took almost a hundered years to achieve universal suffrage.
A series of acts from 1832 onwards increased in steps the proportion of men allowed to vote, made ballots secret and generally improved the fairness of elections. In 1918 the electorate was extended to all men over the age of 21 and all married women over the age of 30, and finally in 1928 woman at last gained equality with men!
