Representation of the People Act 1918
United Kingdom legislation
The Representation of the People Act 1918 (7 & 8 Geo. 5. c. 64) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed to reform the electoral system in Great Britain and Ireland. It is sometimes known as the Fourth Reform Act. The act extended the franchise in parliamentary elections, also known as the right to vote, to men aged over 21, whether or not they owned property, and to women aged over 30 who resided in the constituency whilst occupying land or premises with a rateable value above £5, or whose husbands did. At the same time, it extended the local government franchise to include women aged over 30 on the same terms as men. It came into effect at the 1918 general election.
As a result of the act, the male electorate was extended by 5.2 million to 12.9 million. The female electorate was 8.5 million.
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This entry incorporates text from “Representation of the People Act 1918” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.