Which "myth", sorefingers? That common law is set by precedent in courts? That's what common law *is*. The English didn't invent it - as others have said, different countries have their own versions of court case precedent - but the US naturally shares more with the English version than with other countries' versions, and the English legal system *did* give that body of precedents the name we now use for it.

But what I was trying to get at is that you claimed, very specifically, that common law precedent inherited from England at the time of the American Revolution gave you the right to vote if you'd paid tax. My point was that this cannot be the case, for the simple reason that at the time of the American Revolution, most of the UK population had no right to vote in spite of paying tax. This means that there's no way there can have been a common law precedent for the US to inherit.

I don't have a problem with "if you pay tax, you get to vote". It seems a fair system, and although some argument is possible, I'd agree with you in principle.

But this is where registering your address comes in - if you can show that you own property and hence pay local taxes, giving you a vote in that area is sensible. But you'd need to prove you live there and pay taxes there, because just being in the area at the time of the election wouldn't qualify you! So the registering process is essential, and that's why I disagreed with you about "for having moved to a new address and not informing Her Siezersssss new HomeSS about it". If you've moved and you've not registered to vote, how would they know? That's your fault and not the state's. Maybe they could slick things up by basing voting on who's registered for tax, but there's a separate item in the Constitution about not being barred from voting if you don't pay tax, which could get in the way. Still, if you've moved and you don't tell anyone you've moved, that's your mistake.

My biggest problem with what you said though is that you're painting all this as being the actions of "a Government which bases its appeal on good old fashioned Consurvative American values" and "Neo-cons". As much as I dislike both of those groups, it seems clear that all the laws/rules you're talking about (dual-nationality, US citizenship, etc) have been in place for much longer than Bush has been around. Sure, fixing these conditions would be good, but the fact that these conditions exist is not down to the current administration.

And the current administration has enough wrong with it that picking stuff to protest about which *isn't* its fault is positively bizarre... :-/

Graham.