Suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, distinct from other rights to vote, is the right to vote gained through the democratic process. In English, suffrage and its synonyms are sometimes also used to mean the right to run for office (to be a candidate), but there are no established qualifying terms to distinguish between these different meanings of the term(s). The right to run for office is sometimes called (candidate) eligibility, and the combination of both rights is sometimes called full suffrage. In many other languages, the right to vote is called the active right to vote and the right to be voted for (to run for office) is called the passive right to vote. In English, these are sometimes called active suffrage and passive suffrage.
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Famous quotes containing the word suffrage:
“When will the men do something besides extend congratulations? I would rather have President Roosevelt say one word to Congress in favor of amending the Constitution to give women the suffrage than to praise me endlessly!”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“... 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)
“... in every State there are more women who can read and write than the whole number of illiterate male voters; more white women who can read and write than all Negro voters; more American women who can read and write than all foreign voters.”
—National Woman Suffrage Association. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)