Voting Rights and Suffrage/History/Noteworthy written sources
Is there another noteworthy written source from the past that mentions this right?
Other noteworthy written sources that mention an implicit right to vote in a more modern context include Thomas Rainsborough during the British Putney Debates in 1647, where he stated, “I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government that he hath not had a voice to put Himself under.” Rainsborough’s speech at the Putney Debates also alluded to a divine right to vote: "I do think the main cause why Almighty God gave men reason, it was that they should make use of that reason…every man born in England cannot, ought not, neither by the law of God nor the law of nature, to be exempted from the choice of those who are to make laws for him to live under." (Rainsborough) In the United States, the 1776 Constitution of Virginia was one of the first written sources to establish a protected right to vote, stating that “all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage.” Federalist 52, written by James Madison, also alludes to the importance of voting rights, stating “the definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government” (Avalon Project). In both of these cases, however, the right to vote was granted solely to property-owning men, and it would not be until the mid-19th Century that the connection between the right to vote and property ownership would be removed in both Great Britain and the United States. Additionally, perceptions of suffrage as a universal right have come about much more recently, with New Zealand becoming the first country to legally recognize suffrage as a universal right in 1893 under Part One of the Electoral Act, which outlined that “every person of the age of twenty-one years or upwards who has resided for one year in the colony” was eligible to vote.
References:
Calvin, John, and Luther, Martin, and Milton, John, and Lilburne, John, and Overton, Richard, and Ireton, Henry, and Rainborough, Thomas, and Cromwell, Oliver, and John Wildman. Puritanism and Liberty, being the Army Debates (1647-9). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938.
Federalist No. 52 (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed52.asp#:~:text=A%20representative%20of%20the%20United,office%20under%20the%20United%20States.)