suffrage
n. uncountablen. the legal right to vote in political elections. You use this word when talking about how groups of people fought to have their voices heard in government.
n. the legal right or privilege of voting in public elections. Often used in historical contexts regarding the expansion of the electorate to include disenfranchised groups.
The country finally granted universal suffrage to all citizens last year.
The movement for women's suffrage faced decades of intense political opposition before the law finally changed.
The transition to a modern democracy was marked by the hard-won achievement of equal suffrage, ensuring that every adult had a voice in the legislative process.
From Middle English suffrage (“prayers or pleas on behalf of another”), from Old French, from Medieval Latin suffragium, from Latin suffragium (“support, vote, right of voting”). The sense of "vote" or "right to vote" was directly derived from classical Latin.
Commonly appears in the phrase 'universal suffrage' or 'women's suffrage'. It is uncountable when referring to the right itself, though 'suffrages' can rarely mean individual votes in archaic texts.