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To: frog in a pot
You forgot to say that you're a long time listener, first time caller and that you've got an observation, a question, a comment and a rebuttal. ;-)

Apropos of nothing as my brother is want to say I'd read that only property holders were originally allowed to vote and tracking down and reading this scrubbed case there is a good summary of voting requirements after the adoption of our Constitution. So what does it say you ask? I'll post it and then hang up and listen to your response ... ;-)


When the Federal Constitution was adopted, all the States, with the exception of Rhode Island and Connecticut, had constitutions of their own. These two continued to act under their charters from the Crown. Upon an examination of those constitutions we find that in no State were all citizens permitted to vote. Each State determined for itself who should have that power. Thus, in New Hampshire, 'every male inhabitant of each town and parish with town privileges, and places unincorporated in the State, of twenty-one years of age and upwards, excepting paupers and persons excused from paying taxes at their own request,' were its voters; in Massachusetts 'every male inhabitant of twenty-one years of age and upwards, having a freehold estate within the commonwealth of the annual income of three pounds, or any estate of the value of sixty pounds;' in Rhode Island 'such as are admitted free of the company and society' of the colony; in Connecticut such persons as had 'maturity in years, quiet and peaceable behavior, a civil conversation, and forty shillings freehold or forty pounds personal estate,' if so certified by the selectmen; in New York 'every male inhabitant of full age who shall have personally resided within one of the counties of the State for six months immediately preceding the day of election . . . if during the time aforesaid he shall have been a freeholder, possessing a freehold of the value of twenty pounds within the county, or have rented a tenement therein of the yearly value of forty shillings, and been rated and actually paid taxes to the State;' in New Jersey 'all inhabitants . . . of full age who are worth fifty pounds, proclamation-money, clear estate in the same, and have resided in the county in which they claim a vote for twelve months immediately preceding the election;' in Pennsylvania 'every freeman of the age of twenty-one years, having resided in the State two years next before the election, and within that time paid a State or county tax which shall have been assessed at least six months before the election;' in Delaware and Virginia 'as exercised by law at present;' in Maryland 'all freemen above twenty-one years of age having a freehold of fifty acres of land in the county in which they offer to vote and residing therein, and all freemen having property in the State above the value of thirty pounds current money, and having resided in the county in which they offer to vote one whole year next preceding the election;' in North Carolina, for senators, 'all freemen of the age of twenty-one years who have been inhabitants of any one county within the State twelve months immediately preceding the day of election, and possessed of a freehold within the same county of fifty acres of land for six months next before and at the day of election,' and for members of the house of commons 'all freemen of the age of twenty-one years who have been inhabitants in any one county within the State twelve months immediately preceding the day of any election, and shall have paid public taxes;' in South Carolina 'every free white man of the age of twenty-one years, being a citizen of the State and having resided therein two years previous to the day of election, and who hath a freehold of fifty acres of land, or a town lot of which he hath been legally seized and possessed at least six months before such election, or (not having such freehold or town lot), hath been a resident within the election district in which he offers to give his vote six months before said election, and hath paid a tax the preceding year of three shillings sterling towards the support of the government;' and in Georgia such 'citizens and inhabitants of the State as shall have attained to the age of twenty-one years, and shall have paid tax for the year next preceding the election, and shall have resided six months within the county.'
Source: http://openjurist.org/88/us/162/minor-v-happersett
30 posted on 10/20/2011 1:23:43 PM PDT by Tunehead54 (Nothing funny here ;-)
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To: Tunehead54
Well, the language in the decision regarding real property ownership as a prerequisite to the right to vote in some states and not in others was probably of particular interest to you.

I thought this statement by the 1874 Minor court was refreshing: If the law is wrong, it ought to be changed; but the power for that is not with us.

Such a view acknowledges the standard before one even gets to judicial restraint!

61 posted on 10/20/2011 8:07:26 PM PDT by frog in a pot (Their bible calls for either our conversion or our death - how and when has that changed ?)
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To: Tunehead54

Thanks for posting that. If I ever learned it in school I forgot it ;)


85 posted on 10/22/2011 8:00:35 AM PDT by tutstar
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