Voting Rights
Voting rights were limited under the Fundamental Orders. All Caucasian males at least twenty-one years of age could become a freeman, or a voter, if he met certain property qualifications. In order to vote, the citizen must have owned real estate assessed at a yearly rental value of 40 shillings ($7.00) or owned taxable property assessed at 40 pounds ($134). Since cattle were the only personal property assessable at this time, voting rights were practically restricted to land owners. African-Americans could not constitutionally vote in Connecticut until 1865, when a decision from the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors secured their right to vote. Women could not vote until the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed in 1920.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Connecticut Constitution
Famous quotes containing the words voting and/or rights:
“Common sense should tell us that reading is the ultimate weapon—destroying ignorance, poverty and despair before they can destroy us. A nation that doesn’t read much doesn’t know much. And a nation that doesn’t know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box and the voting booth...The challenge, therefore, is to convince future generations of children that carrying a book is more rewarding than carrying guns.”
—Jim Trelease (20th century)
“A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit.... A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)