Constitutional law: Individual rights - Voting rights (Part 2 of 4 - Milestones of national franchise changes)

Milestones of national franchise changes.

1789: The Constitution grants the states the power to set voting requirements. Generally, states limited this right to property-owning or tax-paying white males (about 6% of the population).

1790: The Naturalization Act of 1790 allows free white men born outside of the United States to become citizens, though not necessarily the right to vote.

1792–1838: Free black males lost the right to vote in several Northern states including in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey.

1792–1856: Abolition of property qualifications for white men, from 1792 (New Hampshire) to 1856 (North Carolina) during the periods of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy. However, tax-paying qualifications remained in five states in 1860—Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and North Carolina. They survived in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island until the 20th century.

In the 1820 election, there were 108,359 ballots cast. Most older states with property restrictions dropped them by the mid-1820s, except for Rhode Island, Virginia and North Carolina. No new states had property qualifications although three had adopted tax-paying qualifications – Ohio, Louisiana, and Mississippi, of which only in Louisiana were these significant and long lasting.

The 1828 presidential election was the first in which non-property-holding white males could vote in the vast majority of states. By the end of the 1820s, attitudes and state laws had shifted in favor of universal white male suffrage.

Voter turnout soared during the 1830s, reaching about 80% of the adult white male population in the 1840 presidential election. 2,412,694 ballots were cast, an increase that far outstripped natural population growth, making poor voters a huge part of the electorate. The process was peaceful and widely supported, except in the state of Rhode Island where the Dorr Rebellion of the 1840s demonstrated that the demand for equal suffrage was broad and strong, although the subsequent reform included a significant property requirement for anyone resident but born outside of the United States.

The last state to abolish property qualification was North Carolina in 1856. However, tax-paying qualifications remained in five states in 1860 – Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and North Carolina. They survived in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island until the 20th century. In addition, many poor whites were later disenfranchised.