Voting Rights in the Virginia Colony: Only Propertied White Men

Restricted Franchise in Colonial Virginia

In the Virginia Colony, suffrage was limited to:

• Free men
• White men
• Who owned at least 50 acres of land

This excluded women, enslaved people, indentured servants, landless men, and non-white freemen. The property requirement reflected the English belief that only those with a "stake in society" (land) should govern it.

Over time, the threshold changed, but race and gender barriers persisted until after the American Revolution and, much later, constitutional amendments.