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Notes -
Intermediate options have certainly existed. The available policies with regard to democratic representation aren't universal suffrage or bust.
Except, first, I'm not sure how restricting the franchise would resolve the issue in question, at least not without restricting it down to a tiny fraction of the population. (But which one, then?)
Second, I'm not sure how it would be done. Because I remember once looking up, over a decade ago, the historical precedents for narrowing the franchise — without eliminating it, that is. And while it's been awhile I do remember a few things from what I was able to find. First, that no nation with universal adult suffrage has ever even tried to narrow the franchise back from that (again, as opposed to suspending or ending democracy entirely). That the only one I found that tried to go back from universal male suffrage was the 2nd French Republic, with the 31 May 1850 electoral law. This mostly served to let Louis-Napoléon grow his support with the people by opposing it, and he undid it the next year, and restored universal male suffrage, during his December 1851 auto-coup, in which he assumed dictatorial powers, and which led to a new constitution a month later that essentially ended the Republic, and set the ground for the Second Empire officially declared that following Christmas. And lastly, that every place that tried to narrow the franchise significantly saw massive political unrest, destabilization, and, similar to ol' Napoleon III, some sort of coup or dictatorship emerging.
Sure, there were some times in early US history where various states made changes to their voting laws that removed the franchise from some subset of voters; but in all of those cases that I found, those same changes also expanded the franchise to some other, generally larger, set of new voters, leaving it an expansion in general.
Tl;dr, the franchise never really gets narrowed in any lasting manner, only expanded or eliminated.
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