For those of our ancestors who could vote in a time before universal suffrage
became the norm, Poll Books can be a useful resource. We can use them to
discover addresses, especially before the census years. Published Poll Books
go back as far as the 1700s and continue until 1872 when The Ballot Act 1872
introduced the secret ballot. Also strange, to the twenty first century
mind, is that some of our ancestors would have had a vote in more than one
place
until this was abolished by the Representation of the People Act 1948. Up
until then property owners could vote in both the constituency where they
owned property as well as the one in which they lived.
