"Grumman-581" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 14:56:46 GMT, "Ken Finney"
wrote:
There was a step in the middle. Originally, you had to be a landowner.
Then many (most? all?) places changed the requirement to a poll tax,
then
the Civil Rights Act outlawed poll taxes.

If someone doesn't own property, why should they have a say in how the
country is run? Yeah, it might "disenfranchise" those inner city
warren inhabitants in the northeast, but I don't believe that would
necessarily be a *bad* thing...

I don't disagree with you. But then the law of unintended consequences
kicks in. Someone subdivides their property into 1 inch square pieces and
sells each piece for $1 so that everyone can participate. If you try to
place limits on the minimum amount of property or the minimum value of
property required, that causes other problems, so they came up with the idea
of a "poll tax" to weed-out those that that didn't have enough of a vested
interest to pay the tax.