AHC: Keep restricted/unequal suffrage more common

BigBlueBox

Banned
At the beginning of the 20th century, most "democracies" only allowed men to vote and typically had a property/wealth requirement or somehow gave a greater weight to the voting power of the wealthy. By the end of the 20th century, every democracy (correct me if I'm wrong) had equal and universal suffrage. There are still dictatorships and countries with rigged elections of course, but no overt restrictions on suffrage or weighted/plural voting. How could this be avoided?
 

Bluesock

Banned
Maybe things like Functional Constituencies are more common? I guess the idea is that instead of one man one vote the idea that every segment of society should be represented could be bigger. Or perhaps post colonial states decide to retain the existing government system by simply replacing their colonial masters with themselves but retaining the basic form of government that existed. Certain African countries could give a great deal of power to their chiefs
 
At the beginning of the 20th century, most "democracies" only allowed men to vote and typically had a property/wealth requirement or somehow gave a greater weight to the voting power of the wealthy. By the end of the 20th century, every democracy (correct me if I'm wrong) had equal and universal suffrage. There are still dictatorships and countries with rigged elections of course, but no overt restrictions on suffrage or weighted/plural voting. How could this be avoided?
well if you discount the city of London to this day. But its not that long since fancy franchises ended ie Northern Ireland pre the introduction of direct rule which had some truly wondrous extra voting provisions for businesses to shore up the Protestant ascendency, good old Gerry Manders played his part too. In theory with no direct rule this could have gone on longer. Similarly some US seats and State Houses and arguably the whole electoral college is profoundly designed to weight the votes against populous urban areas. You could argue that US regulations on Voter ID and banning former criminals from voting are also efforts to rig the system. More directly Hong Kong still has a rigged election system including functional representation and Thailand has reserved seats for the Military. In the UK I suppose a method would have to be found to keep University seats or to include functional democracy in the reform of the House of Lords.
 
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