Most talk about voting rights is centered (understandably) around minority struggles. I wonder how the common (white) man ever got their suffrage. Why would the elites give up that power?
A surprisingly high percentage of American families were able to vote and had representation and sufferage in the 1790s (when the US constitution was ratified).
Sufferage was determined by States (not by the Federal Government), but 50-75% of white men had the vote in the 1790s, plus some other categories.
http://millercenter.org/president/washington/essays/biography/8
Generally all states gave suffrage to free white property owning men. A very high percentage of Americans owned property in the 1790s (mostly their farm).
America at this time was a nation largely composed of (near subsistence) farmers. They generally owned their own farms. Most of the white men who could not vote were working on their father's farm and their father had the vote, so the family was 'represented'. (Generally the eldest son, who stood to inherit the farm. The younger sons would mostly have struck out for the frontier to stake out their own farm, or taken up a trade and expect to acquire property in the form of a workshop or store and a house in a village. town or city, or have become laborers or seamen, in which case they would usually not get the vote until they had saved up enough to buy property.)
Only 6% of Americans lived in cities with a population greater than 2,500 in the 1790s, and cities were where there was the highest concentration of non-property owning laborers, workers, and renters. (With the exception of slaves)
Besides the general suffrage for all free white property owning men, Vermont had granted suffrage to all free men by 1790, Kentucky did the same in 1792 (when it entered the Union as a State), Tennessee followed in 1796. Women who owned property could vote in New Jersey. Black men who owned property could vote in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, North Carolina, Tennessee and Maryland. All in all, a pretty high percent of households had the vote and representation.
The vote was not really controlled only by an "elite" in 1790's America. There really was not a very large "proletariat" in America (other than slaves) at that time.