Jump to content

Talk:Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coming into force

[edit]

Can anyone clarify exactly when women under 21 could first actually vote? It would be useful if the article could include this.

Jennie Lee, Baroness Lee of Asheridge's article says: "At the time of the by-election [21 March 1929] women under the age of 30 were not yet able to vote" (notable because Lee was a woman aged 29, and was elected).

My first instinct was that sounded wrong, because this act came into force in July 1928. However, the text of the act says:

For the purpose of enabling the foregoing provisions of this Act to come into operation as soon as may be [...] the qualifying period for the purpose of the register of electors to be made in the year nineteen hundred and twenty-nine shall end in Scotland on the fifteenth day of December and elsewhere on the first day of December, nineteen hundred and twenty-eight [...] [and] the said register shall come into force on the first day of May, nineteen hundred and twenty-nine

This seems to imply that women were actually only able to vote from 1 May 1929, so Lee's article is correct? Can anyone think of a source that would allow this to be put explicitly in the article? TSP (talk) 15:58, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]