The Founding Fathers viewed voting (suffrage) as central to republican government grounded in the “consent of the governed,” but they differed on who should exercise it and how broadly. Most favored a limited electorate—typically free white male property owners or taxpayers—over universal suffrage. They worried that unrestricted voting could lead to corruption, demagoguery, factionalism, or threats to property rights. The U.S. Constitution largely left voter qualifications to the states rather than setting a national standard.Here are representative comments and positions:Thomas JeffersonJefferson generally favored broader participation among free men and saw education as essential to safe popular rule. He argued that expanding the franchise could better restrain corruption than restricting it to the wealthy:
“It has been thought that corruption is restrained by confining the right of suffrage to a few of the wealthier of the people: but it would be more effectually restrained by an extension of that right to such numbers as would bid defiance to the means of corruption.”
— Notes on the State of Virginia (Query XIV / related discussions)
He also wrote that “the influence over government must be shared among all the people” and that governments degenerate when trusted only to rulers rather than the people themselves. In later correspondence he expressed support for general suffrage (for free men meeting basic residency or militia criteria) while acknowledging honest disagreement over property qualifications. He emphasized that if the people lacked sufficient enlightenment, the remedy was education, not stripping them of control.
James Madison called the right of suffrage “a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions” but stressed the difficulty of regulating it fairly. He weighed the protection of both property and personal rights:
“The right of suffrage is a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions. The regulation of it is, at the same time, a task of peculiar delicacy. … In a just & a free Government, therefore, the rights both of property & of persons ought to be effectually guarded. Will the former be so in a case of universal suffrage? Will the latter be so in case of a suffrage confined to holders of property?”
In Federalist No. 10 and related essays, he discussed how larger republics and representative systems could filter “vicious arts” in elections and favor candidates of established merit. The Constitution’s design (including the original method of electing senators and the Electoral College) reflected concerns about pure majoritarianism.
John Adams was more restrictive. In a 1776 letter to James Sullivan, he opposed expanding the vote to men without property, arguing they lacked independent judgment and could be easily manipulated:He warned that opening the qualifications would create endless demands—from women, young men, and the propertyless—and tend “to confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks, to one common level.” He viewed property as a practical proxy for independence of mind and will.
Benjamin Franklin was more skeptical of strict property tests. A frequently cited anecdote attributed to him illustrates the point:
“Today a man owns a jackass worth fifty dollars and he is entitled to vote; but before the next election the jackass dies. The man in the meantime has become more experienced… but the jackass is dead and the man cannot vote. Now gentlemen, pray inform me, in whom is the right of suffrage? In the man or in the jackass?”
Pennsylvania’s 1776 constitution (influenced by Franklin and radicals) was relatively broad for its time, moving toward taxpayer rather than pure freehold requirements.
Other Perspectives
- Alexander Hamilton supported structural filters (e.g., the Electoral College in Federalist No. 68) so that the choice of president would pass through people capable of deliberation rather than direct popular impulse.
- Thomas Paine took a more egalitarian line: “Every man has a right to one vote, and no more… The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected.”
- At the Constitutional Convention, delegates debated property qualifications but ultimately left the matter mostly to the states. Fears of “democracy” (often used pejoratively for pure majoritarianism) were common among figures such as Elbridge Gerry.