I believe that that was also the case in Britain in between the various Reform Acts. In Prussia you had a different system whereby the authorities would total up the total taxes paid on income and property in each district, then look at individuals, starting with the highest taxpayer and go down until you'd reached one third of all taxes paid - that group would get one third of the vote. Then they'd do the same for the next third of taxes. Everybody else, i.e. the vast majority of the population got the remaining third of the vote. IIRC in the Essen local elections that meant that the head of the Krupp family had one third of the vote all to himself. In addition to this you had the upper house - basically aristorcrats, and you had open voting, meaning that the local landowner could see how the peasants and other poor people voted and take appropriate action if they didn't vote for the reactionaries, though this only worked in those areas that were dominated by large estates.