$70 Trillion in Debt; Growing by $3 Trillion Annually

"A Republic, if you can keep it."
-Benjamin Franklin

It is generally estimated that because of state property and taxpaying qualifications, fewer than one-fourth of all white adult males were eligible to vote in 1787–1789, the time the U.S. Constitution was being ratified. The history of the suffrage in the United States since then has been one of steady expansion, partly through constitutional amendments and partly through legislation. The states largely abandoned the property qualifications for voting by 1850.

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