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Elections to the Legislative Council were held for the first time in the Colony of Aden in 1955. However, only four of the Council's 18 seats were elected. [1] Restrictions on suffrage were imposed linked to age, gender, property ownership and residency. With only around 5,000 people voting, [2] the restrictions ensured that only loyalists to the government were elected. [1] Following the elections there were protests over the suffrage limitations and calling for independence. [1]
The changes to the Colony's constitution were announced on 20 July 1955. [3] Membership of the Council was increased from 16 to 18, with one official and one unofficial member added. [3] The number of nominees was reduced from eight to five, one of whom would be chosen by the Governor to represent the business sector. [3]
Of the elected members, one was to be elected by members of Aden Municipal Council and three from single-member constituencies. [3]
Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability, the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Governments in Westminster democracies are responsible to parliament rather than to the monarch, or, in a colonial context, to the imperial government, and in a republican context, to the president, either in full or in part. If the parliament is bicameral, then the government is responsible first to the parliament's lower house, which is more representative than the upper house, as it usually has more members and they are always directly elected.
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums. In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to vote is called active suffrage, as distinct from passive suffrage, which is the right to stand for election. The combination of active and passive suffrage is sometimes called full suffrage.
Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vote, increasing the number of those parties' potential constituencies. National and international organizations formed to coordinate efforts towards women voting, especially the International Woman Suffrage Alliance.
Universal suffrage gives the right to vote to all adult citizens, regardless of wealth, income, gender, social status, race, ethnicity, or political stance, subject only to certain exceptions as in the case of children, felons, and for a time, women. In its original 19th-century usage by reformers in Britain, universal suffrage was understood to mean only universal manhood suffrage; the vote was extended to women later, during the women's suffrage movement that began in New Zealand in the 19th century.
The Massachusetts General Court is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name "General Court" is a hold-over from the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, when the colonial assembly, in addition to making laws, sat as a judicial court of appeals. Before the adoption of the state constitution in 1780, it was called the Great and General Court, but the official title was shortened by John Adams, author of the state constitution. It is a bicameral body. The upper house is the Massachusetts Senate which is composed of 40 members. The lower body, the Massachusetts House of Representatives, has 160 members. It meets in the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill in Boston.
The North Carolina General Assembly is the bicameral legislature of the State government of North Carolina. The legislature consists of two chambers: the Senate and the House of Representatives. The General Assembly meets in the North Carolina Legislative Building in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States.
The Legislative Council, or upper house, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of South Australia. Its central purpose is to act as a house of review for legislation passed through the lower house, the House of Assembly. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Adelaide.
Elections in South Africa are held for the National Assembly, provincial legislatures and municipal councils. Elections follow a five-year cycle, with national and provincial elections held simultaneously and municipal elections held two years later. The electoral system is based on party-list proportional representation, which means that parties are represented in proportion to their electoral support. For municipal councils there is a mixed-member system in which wards elect individual councillors alongside those named from party lists.
Elections in Thailand refers to the democratic process in which some parts of the Government of Thailand is selected. These include the House of Representatives of Thailand,, local Administrations, Governorship of Bangkok and national referendums. Thailand has so far had 28 general elections since 1933; the last election was in 2019. Voting in elections in Thailand is compulsory. All elections in Thailand are regulated by the Election Commission of Thailand.
Elections in Yemen take place within the framework of a presidential system, with both the President and House of Representatives elected by the public. Due to political instability, elections have not been held regularly since the early 2000s.
Women's suffrage – the right of women to vote – has been achieved at various times in countries throughout the world. In many nations, women's suffrage was granted before universal suffrage, so women and men from certain classes or races were still unable to vote. Some countries granted suffrage to both sexes at the same time. This timeline lists years when women's suffrage was enacted. Some countries are listed more than once, as the right was extended to more women according to age, land ownership, etc. In many cases, the first voting took place in a subsequent year.
Aden Colony, also the Colony of Aden, was a British Crown colony from 1937 to 1963 located in the south of contemporary Yemen. It consisted of the port of Aden and its immediate surroundings.
General elections were held in Singapore on 30 May 1959. They were held under the new constitution and were the first in which all 51 seats in the Legislative Assembly were filled by election. This was the first election victory for the People's Action Party (PAP), as they won a landslide victory with 43 seats, and the party has remained in power ever since these elections.
Black suffrage refers to black people's right to vote and has long been an issue in countries established under conditions of black minorities.
The first Māori elections were held in 1868 in four newly formed Māori electorates during the term of 4th Parliament.
Women's suffrage in Australia was one of the early achievements of Australian democracy. Following the progressive establishment of male suffrage in the Australian colonies from the 1840s to the 1890s, an organised push for women's enfranchisement gathered momentum from the 1880s, and began to be legislated from the 1890s, decades in advance of Europe and North America. South Australian women achieved the right to vote in 1894, and to stand for office in 1895 following the world first Constitutional Amendment Act 1894. This preceded even male suffrage in Tasmania. Western Australia granted women the right to vote from 1899, although with some racial restrictions. In 1902, the newly established Australian Parliament passed the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902, which set a uniform law enabling women to vote at federal elections and to stand for the federal parliament. By 1908, the remaining Australian states had legislated for women's suffrage for state elections. Grace Benny was elected as the first councillor in 1919, Edith Cowan the first state Parliamentarian in 1921, Dorothy Tangney the first Senator and Enid Lyons the first Member of the House of Representatives in 1943.
Suffrage in Australia refers to the right to vote for people living in Australia, including all its six component states and territories, as well as local councils. The colonies of Australia began to grant universal male suffrage from 1856, with women's suffrage following between the 1890s and 1900s. Some jurisdictions introduced racial restrictions on voting from 1885. Such restrictions had been eradicated by the 1960s. Today, the right to vote at federal, state and local levels of government is enjoyed by citizens of Australia over the age of 18 years.
General elections were held in Kenya Colony on 2 April 1924. The elections were the first under a new Constitution which saw suffrage extended to Indians and Arabs, who were allotted five and one elected seat in the Legislative Council respectively, alongside the eleven elected seats for the white population, although appointed members were still the majority. Whilst all adult Indian residents were given the right to vote, in the Arab community only men literate in Arabic or Swahili and resident in the country for two years were enfranchised, as the community had requested that women not be given the right to vote. One member was appointed to represent the majority black population.
Elections to the Legislative Council were held in the Colony of Aden on 4 January 1959.
General elections were held in the Gold Coast in June 1946. Constitutional amendments on 29 March 1946 enabled the colony to be the first in Africa to have a majority of black members in its legislature; of the Legislative Council's 32 members, 21 were black, including all 18 elected members. The first meeting of the Legislative Council was on 23 July 1946.
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