Suffrage, voice derived from the Latin " Suffragium " which to say, help or aid. It is the right or privilege to vote to choose political representatives or to approve or reject legislation. Today, in many democracies, the right to vote is guaranteed as a birthright, without ethnic, class, or gender discrimination. Without any type of disqualifying test (such as non-literacy), citizens above the minimum age required in a country can vote normally in elections. This is called universal suffrage.
To reach universal suffrage, a long way had to be traveled during which, in most countries, the exercise of political rights in favor of groups was limited. It is known that in past times there were different limitations on the right to vote, since those who did not meet certain requirements were excluded from the electoral rolls. Among these voting modalities we will mention, those that were configured by economic estimates, in which the granting of the right to vote was conditioned by verifying an income; and those who did not accredit a certain annual income, were not registered in the electoral rolls, thus being unable to vote.
In common language Suffrage and Vote are used as equivalent concepts, although in doctrine differences are marked between them. For some authors the voterepresents the act by which the exercise of the right to vote is specified. In this sense, only citizens who satisfy the requirements established by law are entitled to suffrage; while the Vote is used more broadly to make decisions in all types of collegiate bodies. For others, the right to vote in electoral matters is made concrete through suffrage, in such a way that only those who have the right to vote can vote. However, we must point out that there is no drawback to using both terms synonymously. In democratic States, the laws that establish the right to vote are fundamental and so important that in all representative democracy universal suffrage comes to be the ideal means for integration,conformation and legitimation of any government.
