Democratization and the Practices of Voting in Habsburg Austria, 1896–1914: New Directions in Research

From the mid-1890s, Habsburg Austria began to follow European trends and experienced a gradual democratization of voting rights, which involved not only an expansion of the electorate but also an innovation of procedures that attempted to modernize elections. In this context, the article calls for a more systematic study of voting practices and attempts to point at some issues that have thus far received insufficient analysis. These include not only the occasional massive violent conflicts at elections that could accompany democratization until World War I but also the presence of women as voters at local and diet elections and the gradual introduction of polling booths. Measures such as allowing single women to cast their vote personally in a few crownlands or attempting to guard the secrecy of the vote suggest the level of experimentation in this period. The state's objective of orderly, “modern” elections is particularly called into question when we consider the extent to which government agents, including policemen and the army, were involved in election conflicts that resulted in fraud and sometimes bloodshed.