May 21, 2025

There never was any government so purely popular, as not to require the exclusion of the poor, of strangers, women and minors from the public councils.

Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), Dutch humanist, diplomat, lawyer, theologian and jurist, Rights of War and Peace, Book I, III, 8

Two down? Two to go? Of the latter, who deserves the right to vote more: immigrants (the “strangers”), after a set number of years? Or minors of, say 15 or 16 years?

It is sobering to realize that only in the last one hundred years of all of human existence have women, and certainly not in all countries, ceased to be excluded from the most fundamental democratic right—to participate in the selection of those who would represent them in the halls of power.