In Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, proof of having paid taxes or poll-taxes was (as in some northern and western States) made an indispensable prerequisite to voting, either alone or as an alternative for an educational qualification. Virginia used this policy until 1882 and resumed it again in 1902, cutting off such as had not paid or had failed to preserve or bring to the polls their receipts. Many States surrounded registration and voting with complex enactments. An educational qualification, often very elastic, sometimes the voter's alternative for a tax-receipt, was resorted to by Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Georgia in 1898 rejected such a device. Alabama hesitated, jealous lest illiterate whites should lose their votes. But, after the failure of one resolution for a convention, this State, too, upon the stipulation that the new constitution should disfranchise no white voter and that it should be submitted to the people for ratification, not promulgated directly by its authors as was done in South Carolina, Louisiana, and later in Virginia and Delaware, consented to a revision, which was ratified at the polls November, 1901, not escaping censure for its drastic thoroughness. Its distinctive feature was the "good character clause," whereby an appointment board in each county registers "all voters under the present [previous] law" who are veterans or the lawful descendants of such, and "all who are of good character and understand the duties and obligations of citizenship." In the above line of constitution-framing, whose problem was to steer between the Scylla of the Fifteenth Amendment and the Charybdis of negro domination, viz., legally abridge the negro vote so as to insure Caucasian supremacy at the polls, Mississippi led. The "Mississippi plan," originating, it is believed, in the brain of Senator James Z. George, had for its main features a registry tax and an educational qualification, all adjustable to practical exigencies. Each voter must pay a poll-tax of at least $2.00 and never to exceed $3.00, producing to the election overseers satisfactory evidence of having paid such poll and all other legal taxes. He must be registered "as provided by law" and "be able to read any section of the constitution of the State, to understand the same when read to him, or to give a reasonable interpretation thereof." In municipal elections electors were required to have "such additional qualifications as might be prescribed by law." This constitution was attacked as not having been submitted to the people for ratification and as violating the Act of Congress readmitting Mississippi; but the State Supreme Court sustained it, and was confirmed in this by the United States Supreme Court in dealing with the similar Louisiana constitution.