Reform Acts

The bill of 1832 disfranchised many boroughs which enjoyed undue representation and increased that of the large towns, at the same time extending the franchise.

Ten years later, the Reform Act 1928, passed by the Conservatives, resulted in universal suffrage with a voting age of 21.

In 1969, the United Kingdom became the first major democratic country to lower its age of franchise to 18 in the Reform Act 1969 passed by the Labour government.

In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, before 1832, fewer than one adult male in ten was eligible to vote in parliamentary elections.

[2][3] A few boroughs gave the vote to all male householders, but many parliamentary seats were under the control of a small group or sometimes a single rich aristocrat.

Reforms had been proposed in the 18th century, both by radicals such as John Wilkes and by more conservative politicians such as William Pitt the Younger.

[21][22][23] The title Representation of the People Act was adopted in other countries of, or formerly part of, the British Empire through the spread of the Westminster parliamentary system.

The act also did away with most of the "rotten" and "pocket" boroughs such as Old Sarum, which with only seven voters, all controlled by the local squire, was still sending two members to Parliament.

This act re-apportioned representation in Parliament, thus making that body more accurately represent the citizens of the country geographically (although still with no party-proportional balance), but also gave the power of voting to those lower in the social and economic scale, for the act extended the right to vote (in the boroughs) to any long-term holders of tenements of at least £10 annual value, adding 217,000 voters to an electorate of 435,000.

The novel Middlemarch, by Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) is set in the 1830s and mentions the struggle over the Reform Bills, though not as a major topic.

[32] Some people in Britain, mostly associated with the Liberal Democrats political party, have called for a new "Great Reform Act" to introduce electoral changes they favour.

These would include lowering the minimum voting age to 16 and introducing proportional representation, which are also supported by the Green Party of England and Wales.