Once upon a time, in the United States of America, the beacon of democracy:

The vote was mostly limited to white male property owners; by 1828, the property ownership requirement had disappeared in many states.

Black men newly freed after the Civil War and all African Americans up until the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s faced high hurdles to voting. In some cases, literacy tests were applied and, in all cases, any person white or black wanting to cast a ballot had to pay a poll tax.

Women could not vote until passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920.

After World War II, young people started to advocate lowering the voting age to 18. They reasoned that if they could fight for the country, they should be able to vote. Not until the civil unrest of the Vietnam War was the voting age lowered by the 26th Amendment in 1971.

In recent years in Virginia, efforts have surged forward—and sometimes backward—to restore voting rights to individuals previously convic...