Suffrage
Kuwait has universal adult suffrage for Kuwaiti citizens who are 21 or older, with the exception of
( 1 ) those who currently serve in the armed forces and, ( 2 ) citizens who have been naturalized for fewer than 30 years.
The Explanatory Memorandum of the Constitution bars members of the ruling family of the Mubarak branch (the branch from which the Emir must descend) from running for election to the National Assembly, though the Memorandum does not explicitly prohibit these members of the ruling family from casting votes. It is not clear if the prohibition on candidacies would be enforced. Some members of the ruling family are found on the voter rolls, though prominent members of the family do not vote.
In 1996 naturalized citizens were given the right to vote, but only after they had been naturalized for at least 30 years.
The franchise was expanded to include women on May 16, 2005, in a 35–23 vote with one abstention. Under pressure from Islamists, the right of women to run as candidates and to vote was made subject to Islamic Law: for example, men and women will vote in separate polling places.
Most residents of Kuwait are not citizens and consequently do not have the right to vote. Kuwait's citizenship law, in theory, gives citizenship to those who descend, in the male line, from residents of Kuwait in 1920.
Read more about this topic: Elections In Kuwait
Famous quotes containing the word suffrage:
“Having a thirteen-year-old in the family is like having a general-admission ticket to the movies, radio and TV. You get to understand that the glittering new arts of our civilization are directed to the teen-agers, and by their suffrage they stand or fall.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“... woman was made first for her own happiness, with the absolute right to herself ... we deny that dogma of the centuries, incorporated in the codes of all nations—that woman was made for man ...”
—National Woman Suffrage Association. As quoted in The History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 3, ch. 27, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage (1886)
“... the most important effect of the suffrage is psychological. The permanent consciousness of power for effective action, the knowledge that their own thoughts have an equal chance with those of any other person ... this is what has always rendered the men of a free state so energetic, so acutely intelligent, so powerful.”
—Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906)