Introduction

This book explores disenfranchisement and other voting barriers before and after the introduction of so-called universal suffrage. Focusing on economic voting restrictions, implemented through constitutional provisions, laws, state policies, and ad-hoc practices, we explore the many disqualifications barring people from voting in self-governing and aspiring liberal democracies, including poor relief dependency, lack of property or wealth, bankruptcy, tax debt, and low income. The notions of economic independence underpinning these exclusions built and reinforced unequal social structures, especially in terms of class, gender, race, age, civil status, and education. Examining suffrage from an economic perspective prompts new questions about democracy and political citizenship as contested concepts. This approach illuminates the histories of democratic practices, state formation, welfare states, the economic entanglements of political citizenship, gender and racial hierarchies, and the unique circumstances of colonial and settler-colonial democracies. After exploring the influence of Enlightenment ideas on liberal democratic notions of political citizenship, this introduction highlights themes that unite the chapters. These are centred around four concerns: poor relief; different experiences of suffrage at the national, provincial, and local levels; voter exclusion through policy and vernacular political practices; and colonialism.