Qualification of voters: case study of some German states’ laws of the first half of the 19th century

Implementing the principle of universal suffrage a legislator applies a method of negative definition by statement of qualification of voters in the legal regulations. There are some kinds of qualifications in the German states’ laws, such as: gender, age, religion, property, settlement, record of convictions, state civil service or other post, legal capacity, citizenship, and others. The research is performed as a part of the federal special-purpose program “Scientific, academic and teaching personnel of innovative Russia" for 2009-2013, government contract №П1291 dated 09.06.2010