I don't know how to edit a post, but what does this mean: "the right to vote is not a privilege, it is a right in of itself" It sounds smart, sure. But what? Democracies are not a given. Living in a democracy is a privilege, many in the world don't have that. Even within democracies, there are a lot barriers to vote, especially in the US.
Maybe she wanted to say, in a democracy voting should not be a privilege, but the right of every citizen. But even then, mental health, age, felony charges, etc can create barriers. So it is an interesting topic to discuss, who has the right to vote. Again, it is another instance where she can only skim on the surface.
Even in countries which we normally think of as "old democracies", universal suffrage is something actually relatively new. Most "democracies" didn't have it until the first decades of the 20th century or even beyond that. In Europe, in countries that had representative systems, restrictions to voting were based mostly on gender (women e.g. couldn't vote), property/income qualifications (e.g. one had to be a householder or pay local taxes), or education (e.g. literacy tests), but restrictions based on race, ethnicity or population group were not so common.
In the "New World", on the other hand, the right to vote was already quasi-universal for white men, but many population groups were excluded and not only in the US. South Africa was obviously the most extreme example of race-based franchise, but , for example, reserve Indians and Inuit people could not vote in Canada (as American Indians could not vote either in the US) and most Aborigenes generally could not vote, especially in federal elections, in Australia. And we all know that, although black Americans could theoretically vote, state laws imposed several restrictions on their ability to do so (from literacy tests to poll taxes) while exempting white people in similar circumstances through legacy clauses and things like that.
The discussion that Meghan was having in the interview focused mostly on women's suffrage; the 19th itself is a reference, I believe, to the 19th amendment to the US constitution (ratified in 1920), which barred the United States or any individual state from restricting the right of citizens of the United States to vote on account of sex. More broadly speaking, it was a discussion also about all whom I mentioned above who were once denied the vote because they were poor, or uneducated, or simply of "the wrong color". It is completely bizarre then that, in the middle of that very serious conversation, Meghan would mention her husband "not being able to vote" in the UK, not only because he is actually "able" to vote (but chooses not to do it), but also mostly because using one of the most privileged and influential persons in the UK as an example of "disenfranchisement" is actually completely out of touch and shows how superficial Meghan can be sometimes.
I won't comment any further on this issue not to repeat myself.
PS: Wikipedia has a nice chart of "true" universal suffrage dates in the article below and it is quite surprising: we are talking for example of as late as 1967 in Australia, 1960 in Canada or at least 1965 in the US (and those are all countries normally thought to be highly "democratic"). European countries usually do better with the last major historic hurdle actually being women's suffrage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_suffrage
