An introduction to how many people could, and did, vote in the eighteenth century [5-minute read] The ‘electorate’ is the group of individuals who were entitled to vote in an election. This is different from the number of people who actually cast their votes at a poll, a group which we might call the ‘voterate’. […]
Edmund Green gives the definitive guide to their varieties, formats and contexts [40-minute read] Voting is a means of aggregating individual preferences into collective decisions, and through which the authority to enforce those decisions is legitimated.[1] The point of voting is to have one’s vote counted. This makes the study of historical voting unusual, in […]
Disorder was endemic in 18th-century elections, among voters and non-voters alike [15-minute read] Georgian elections were often noisy, contentious, and sometimes even violent civic occasions. Voters and non-voters alike were active, engaged participants, sometimes using whatever they could get their hands on to express their pleasure or displeasure. Liberal treats of alcohol made violence and […]
Though excluded from the franchise, women found many ways to influence the vote [20-minute read] Five months before the 1768 general election, Lord Breadalbane complained to his daughter, Marchioness Grey, that the ‘Rage of Electioneering’ had already infected Scotland, and that the ‘epidemical Madness’ of the upcoming elections was more virulent than ever. At the […]
