alt Hacker NewsIt was because they thought that landowners would direct the votes of the people who lived on that land. The same reason was given for not allowing women to vote. https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1645
This comes directly from a historical British restriction on voting rights that in turn is an artifact of feudalism. https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_2_1s3....
Ancient democracies, including those of Greek city states like Athens, restricted voting to landowners because prior to the invention of the printing press, only aristocrats could understand the issues being voted on.
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> Ancient democracies, including those of Greek city states like Athens, restricted voting to landowners because prior to the invention of the printing press, only aristocrats could understand the issues being voted on.
This is such bullshit. Pre-literate societies were not ignorant societies, they were not stupid societies, they were not issue-free societies. The printing press gave rise to literacy which then gave rise to both books and print-based issue campaigning. But the idea that before people were able to read they were also unable to understand "the issues being voted on" is ridiculous. People ate, built, got sick, got hot, got cold, got injured, were richer or poorer ... everyone had a framework in which to understand "the issues being voted on".
You could argue it wasn't an educated understanding, and that might be correct depending on your understanding of what "education" is. But the idea that people couldn't actually understand stuff until literacy arrived is just ridiculous.
Yeah I know. My point is that in the US, in 2026, whether voting should be restricted to property owners is not "up for debate," except maybe among a certain set of cranks.