"No person shall be entitled to vote in any other town-house or precinct than that in which he or she doth actually reside at the time of election."
At first the law was construed to admit single women only, but afterward it was made to include females eighteen years old, married or single, without distinction of race. But as most of the women were on the side of the Federation and always delivered a heavy vote, a Democratic legislature, to defranchise Federalists, passed in 1807 an act defining the qualifications of electors, excluding women and free colored men by the use of the words "White male citizens." This was a partisan piece of legislature, clearly in violation of the constitutional guarantee, and made under the pretext that male voters, by disguising themselves as women and negroes, had voted several times. It was on the strength of this pretext that the unconstitutional act was passed and upheld.
It is on record that in Virginia likewise women at an early day exercised the right of voting. But it is unknown, for what reason this right was not preserved.
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