Talk:Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928

Latest comment: 3 years ago by TSP in topic Coming into force
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Coming into force

Can anyone clarify exactly when women under 21 could first actually vote? It would be useful if the article could include this.

Jennie Lee, Baroness Lee of Asheridge's article says: "At the time of the by-election [21 March 1929] women under the age of 30 were not yet able to vote" (notable because Lee was a woman aged 29, and was elected).

My first instinct was that sounded wrong, because this act came into force in July 1928. However, the text of the act says:

For the purpose of enabling the foregoing provisions of this Act to come into operation as soon as may be [...] the qualifying period for the purpose of the register of electors to be made in the year nineteen hundred and twenty-nine shall end in Scotland on the fifteenth day of December and elsewhere on the first day of December, nineteen hundred and twenty-eight [...] [and] the said register shall come into force on the first day of May, nineteen hundred and twenty-nine

This seems to imply that women were actually only able to vote from 1 May 1929, so Lee's article is correct? Can anyone think of a source that would allow this to be put explicitly in the article? TSP (talk) 15:58, 4 November 2020 (UTC)