to the
election of the members, so that representatives are chosen simply to
the Storthing as a whole. The elections take place every third year.
There are forty-one urban, and eighty-two rural, districts, and every
district returns one member--a total of 123.

Formerly the franchise rested, as in Sweden, upon a property
qualification; but by a series of suffrage reforms within the past
decade and a half it has been brought about that in respect to
electoral privileges Norway is to-day the most democratic of European
countries. In 1898 the Liberal government of Steen procured the
enactment of a measure which long had occupied a leading place in the
programme of the radical elements. By it the parliamentary franchise
was conferred upon all male citizens of a minimum age of twenty-five
years who have resided at least five years in Norway and who have
suffered no judicial impairment of civil rights. The effect was to
double at a stroke the national electorate. In 1901 the same Government
carried an important bill by which the suffrage in municipal elections
was conferred upon male citizens without restriction (save that of age),
upon all unmarried women twenty-five years of age who pay taxes on (p. 582)
an annual income of not less than 300 kronor, and upon all married
women of similar age whose husbands are taxed in equivalent amounts.
During ensuing years there was widespread agitation in behalf of the
parliamentary franchise for women, and the Liberal party made this one
of the principal items in its programme. June 14, 1907, by a vote of
73 to 48, the Storthing rejected a proposal that women be given the
parliamentary franchise on the same terms as men, but by the decisive
majority of 96 to 25 it conferred the privilege upon all women who
were in possession of the municipal franchise under the law of 1901.
The rapidity with which woman's suffrage sentiment had developed is
indicated by the fact that as late as 1898 a proposal looking toward
the including of women in the parliamentary electorate had received in
the Storthing a total of but 33 votes. By the legislation of 1907
Norway became the first of European nations to confer upon women,
under any conditions, the privilege of voting for members of the
national legislative body and of sitting as members of that body. At
the elections of 1909, the first in which women participated, no
revolutionizing effects were observed. The electorate, however, was
increased by ap