Tony Blair Quotes
I am not sure that we would always want 16-year-olds to do all the things they can do. I am afraid that I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman on the voting age. I think that it should remain as it is.
Blair, Tony. "Engagements." Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), House of Commons, 26 Jan. 2000, col. 397.
This is an excellent quotation to illustrate the limited voting franchise that existed in the early days of the nation. Note that this constitution, unlike those of Southern states would allow a Black to vote if he had the requisite assets. However, the poor could not vote regardless of race.
This was a year after the United States gave women the right to vote.
The issue was the voting franchise for Negroes in the aftermath of the Civil War.
He was referring to Negroes who did not then have the fight to vote.
The election franchise in Ohio was originally only given to white residents who had paid state or local taxes. At the time, there were no sales or income taxes, so the only people who paid taxes were property owners. So this clause had the same effect as many other state constitutions of the time of limiting voters to the relatively wealthy. See the earlier Massachusetts Constitution {616748}. However, not that by this time race became a criterion in voting eligibility. In the Massachusetts case and some other states, a Black or an Indian who owned property could vote. But in Ohio, race per se was a disqualification if not white. This also precluded, Indians and Asians from voting in Ohio.
The voting age was reduced from 21 to 18, when 18 year olds were being drafted for military service and some were being killed or wounded. Many argued that a person who was old enough to die for America was old enough to vote in America. 18-21 year olds however have not voted in the same proportions as older citizens. The guilt emenated from the fact that 18 year olds could at that time be drafted to fight in America’s wars and perhaps die, but they could not vote.
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. On his resignation he was appointed Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, a diplomatic post which he held until 2015. He currently serves as the executive chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, established in 2016. As prime minister, many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy. He is the only living former Labour leader to have led the party to a general election victory and the only one in history to form three majority governments.
