Census suffrage

Census suffrage

Also known as "censitary suffrage", it is the opposite of equal suffrage, meaning that the votes cast by those eligible to vote are not equal, but weighed differently according to the person's income or rank in society (e.g., people who do not own property or whose income is lower than a given amount are barred from voting; or people with higher education have more votes than those with lower education; stockholders who have more shares in a given company have more votes than those with fewer shares). In many countries, census suffrage restricted who could vote and be elected: in the United States, until the Jacksonian reforms of the 1830s, only men who owned land of a specified acreage or monetary value could vote or participate in elections. Similarly, in Brazil, the Constitution of 1824 established that, in order to vote, citizens would need to have an annual income of 200,000 milréis and, to be voted, their minimum annual income would need to be 400,000 milréis.