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This paper is concerned with the critical threshold phenomenon for one-dimensional damped, pressureless Euler-Poisson equations with electric force induced by a constant background, originally studied in [S. Engelberg and H. Liu and E. Tadmor, Indiana Univ. Math. J. 50 (2001) 109-157]. A simple transformation is used to linearize the characteristic system of equations, which allows us to study the geometrical structure of critical threshold curves for three damping cases: overdamped, underdamped and borderline damped through phase plane analysis. We also derive the explicit form of these critical curves. These sharp results state that if the initial data is within the threshold region, the solution will remain smooth for all time, otherwise it will have a finite time breakdown. Finally, we apply these general results to identify critical thresholds for a non-local system subjected to initial data on the whole line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]