Early American Voting Demographics

[Jack Rakove]

Two quick points, re observations made by Paul Finkelman in his messages:

South Carolina did have a ratification convention, like every other state 
save R.I., proverbial home of Jews, Turks, and infidels. What made SC 
somewhat exceptional, I think, is that its assembly, endowed with a strong 
collective ego concept, did conduct a fairly substantive debate of its own 
on the Constitution on its merits, prior to adopting the legislation for 
calling a convention.

The one state that did not originally hold a convention was R.I., but it 
went the theory of popular sovereignty, as advanced by the framers, one 
better by subjecting the Constitution to a popular referendum, where it was 
resoundingly rejected.

I haven't checked this systematically, so this last point is subject to 
correction, but it is my understanding that most of the states, in their 
enabling legislation for the ratification conventions, relaxed the usual 
suffrage requirements so that unpropertied adult males could generally vote 
for convention delegates, and this in turn illustrates the extent to which 
they distinguished the need to obtain a broader consent to a fundamental 
constitutional act from the somewhat lesser (though still quite broad by 
18th-c. standards) for popular consent to the ordinary acts of government.

Jack Rakove
Stanford University