George,

In general, I don't think allowing the vote in more than one jurisdiction would work.

Besides giving those with property an undue influence on election outcomes (shades of the poll tax), in just how many places could a person vote? In Albemarle, for example, could the vote be cast in different electoral districts? If it is residency rather than just owning property, how much time counts? In Nelson County, which derives a major portion of its local revenues from non-service-using Wintergreen owners, why would they vote to keep such services, or pay the taxes for, say, schools? Yet it is this ratio of non-service using taxpayers to real residents that allows the county government to keep the county rural (or should, at any rate), which is why the Wintergreen folks came here in the first place. Look no further than over the mountain at Augusta to see how dealing with the vicious cycle of "subdivisions need industry needs workers" has trashed their countryside.

More importantly, though, is that this question assumes that the essence of citizenship in a democracy is paying taxes. Not at all, since citizens in all sorts of nondemocratic polities have always paid taxes but had little say in how they were governed. Citizenship is a function, or should be, of how much a person is involved in the process, and we require that a decision be made as to one's home and where one will get involved. Property owners, even if they vote elsewhere, can always speak up in public, write letters to the editor, back local politicians of their choice with money and other legal support and generally do everything we all wish would be done, except vote.

Al Weed (electronic mail, June 1, 2001).