Much of the anecdotal literature classifies the New Jersey Constitution’s voting qualifications as either accidental or inconsequential. In a 1990 essay, historian Irwin N. Gertzog argued that the document’s use of the phrase “all inhabitants” was a way of rewarding New Jersey’s men for their support of the patriot cause. “Until then,” Gertzog wrote, these men “had been unable to satisfy more proscriptive eligibility requirements.” Now, however, “the framers of the [New Jersey] Constitution were sending a signal to the men who would finance and fight the war that the new state was prepared to be generous in the distribution of political rights.”
Because women had not voted prior to the American Revolution, Gertzog reasoned that the framers assumed the status quo would continue during and after the war. As such, they did not feel the need to specifically exclude women and African Americans from the voting qualifications. “All inhabitants,” in this case, was understood to mean free white men.
Jan Ellen Lewis’ 2011 paper challenged Gertzog’s interpretation. Then a historian at Rutgers University, Lewis suggested that the State Constitution’s language was “rather carefully crafted, the product of compromise” instead of an oversight. Her research indicated that the New Jersey Provincial Congress’ early drafts of the document underwent multiple language changes in late 1775 and early 1776. At least one version used the specific word “he” when identifying voters, but later drafts replaced the pronoun with more gender-neutral language, pointing to a deliberate change.
While various states included similarly vague phrasing in their constitutions (just five explicitly limited the vote to men in their first versions), New Jersey was the only place where women actually took advantage of the loophole to turn out at the polls in the early years of the nation’s history.
If the initial impetus for allowing women and free African Americans to vote in New Jersey was unclear, a subsequent election law change made the state the first in the Union to officially enfranchise women. The State Constitution’s wording was open to interpretation, but the 1790 Electoral Reform Enrolled Law specifically noted that voters in seven New Jersey counties could cast a ballot wherever “he or she” resided.