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The Constitution of the United States recognizes that the states have the power to set voting requirements. A few states allowed free Black men to vote, and New Jersey also included unmarried and widowed women who owned property. [1] Generally, states limited this right to property-owning or tax-paying White males (about 6% of the population). [2]
Six colonies allowed alternatives to freehold ownership (such as personal property or tax payment) that extended voting rights to owners of urban property and even prosperous farmers who rented their land. Groups excluded from voting included laborers, tenant farmers, unskilled workers and indentured servants.
The Charter of Liberties and Privileges was an act passed by the New York General Assembly during its first session in 1683 that laid out the political organization of the colony, set up the procedures for election to the assembly, created 12 counties, and guaranteed certain individual rights for the colonists.
During the American colonial period a freeman was a person who was not a slave. The term originated in 12th-century Europe. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a man had to be a member of the Church to be a freeman; in neighboring Plymouth Colony a man did not need to be a member of the Church, but he had to be elected to this privilege by the General Court.
Quakers were not permitted to vote in Plymouth Colony or in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and along with Baptists, were not permitted to vote in several other colonies as well, and Catholics were disenfranchised following the Glorious Revolution (1688–1689) in Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Carolina, and Virginia. [9]
The history of direct democracy amongst non-Native Americans in the United States dates from the 1630s in the New England Colonies. [1]The legislatures of the New England colonies were initially governed as popular assemblies, with every freeman eligible to directly vote in the election of officers and drafting of laws.
First, suffrage was the most generous in the world, with every man allowed to vote who owned a certain amount of property. [100] Fewer than one-percent of British men could vote, whereas a majority of American freemen were eligible. The roots of democracy were present, [101] although deference was typically shown to social elites in colonial ...
All colonial charters guaranteed to the colonists the vague rights and privileges of Englishmen, which would later cause trouble during the American Revolution. In the second half of the 17th century, the Crown looked upon charters as obstacles to colonial control and substituted the royal colony for corporations and proprietary governments.