Extension of the franchise
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Question
What does 'extension of the franchise' mean?
Answer
The gradual widening of the right to vote — from a wealthy few towards all adults.
Question
Define 'franchise'.
Answer
The legal right to vote in elections.
Question
What are the three broad stages of widening the franchise?
Answer
Property/tax-based male suffrage → universal male suffrage → universal adult suffrage (women included).
Question
What did the US Fifteenth Amendment (1870) do?
Answer
Said the vote could not be denied by race — legally enfranchising Black men after the Civil War.
Question
What did the US Nineteenth Amendment (1920) do?
Answer
Gave American women the right to vote.
Question
What did the Twenty-Fourth Amendment (1964) do?
Answer
Banned the poll tax in US federal elections.
Question
What did the Voting Rights Act (1965) do?
Answer
Banned literacy tests and sent federal officials to enforce Black voting in the South.
Question
What were Jim Crow voting devices?
Answer
Southern tricks — literacy tests, poll taxes and grandfather clauses — used to stop Black citizens voting without mentioning race.
Question
What was a grandfather clause?
Answer
A rule letting you skip voting tests if your grandfather had voted — impossible for descendants of enslaved people.
Question
When did German men first get universal suffrage, and for what?
Answer
1871 — universal male suffrage to elect the Reichstag in the new German Empire.
Question
What did the Weimar Constitution (1919) change about the franchise?
Answer
It created full democratic franchise and gave women the vote for the first time.
Question
How does extending the franchise relate to representative institutions?
Answer
A wider vote deepens democracy: it strengthens parties, makes elections matter more and turns legislatures into the real seat of power.
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Full study notes for Extension of the franchise
Topic 14.1 hub
Emergence of democratic states
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