The requirement to pay a fee in order to vote kept low-income citizens, both white and black, from taking part in elections. The Twenty-fourth Amendment made it illegal to charge any voter for the right to cast a ballot in any federal election.
It seems to me the South can help its own cause by taking an affirmative position on this. New Hampshire is the first state to eliminate the rule that only property owners and taxpayers can vote. In , North Carolina becomes the last state to eliminate property holding as a requirement for voting. In Williams v. Mississippi , the U. In Guinn v. United States , the U. This provision allows illiterate white men to vote, but not illiterate blacks, as most of their grandfathers had been slaves.
Many southern states adopt the policy of charging voters a poll tax. This tactic denies the right to vote to both black and white voters who cannot afford the tax. In Breedlove v. The Supreme Court holds that the statute does not violate the Constitution, as it does not discriminate arbitrarily. In Davis v. Schnell , the U. Supreme Court finds that an Alabama constitutional amendment that requires citizens to pass a test demonstrating their understanding of an article of the federal Constitution in order to vote violates that very document.
The legislative history of the Amendment discloses that the tests are intended to disenfranchise African Americans. In Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections , the U. In a sweeping move, Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of , which bars discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, religion, and gender in voting, public accommodations such as restaurants and hotels , the workplace, and schools.
Believing the social gains that African Americans achieved by the Civil Rights Act of can best be protected by exercising the right to vote, Congress writes a comprehensive voting rights law.
It temporarily suspends literacy tests and provides for the appointment of federal examiners with the power to register qualified citizens to vote. Under this law, any racially discriminatory act that prevents Americans from voting is prohibited. Following ratification of the Twenty-fourth Amendment, Virginia amends its poll tax law.
Forssenius , the Supreme Court rules that the burden of proving residency so far in advance of an election violates the Twenty-fourth Amendment.
In Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections , the U. Supreme Court overrules its earlier decision in Breedlove v. Suttles and declares that the use of a poll tax at state elections is unconstitutional.
The Court holds that discrimination based on economic status is in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As a result of this ruling and the passage of the Twenty-fourth Amendment, poll taxes can no longer be used in federal or state elections. In this way, the matter of voter qualifications was principally left to state discretion. At the time the Constitution was ratified, many states limited the right to vote to property owners. States wanted a sufficiently interested electorate, and they believed that property owners were not only the most interested, but also had the most at stake in the outcome of an election.
Also, taxpayers could be considered part of an interested electorate, as the government directed where and how their tax dollars would be used and what taxes would be levied. By the mid-nineteenth century, most states had abandoned property requirements or poll taxes as limitations on the franchise and extended the right to vote to all free white men. With the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the federal government legally extended the franchise to all men regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
After nearly disappearing in the states, a repurposed poll tax returned as part of a successful effort to undermine the Fifteenth Amendment and reestablish limits on the franchise. Beginning in Florida in , all the former Confederate States, and a few others, instituted a suite of changes to voting laws as a part of this effort. They introduced literacy tests and disqualified convicted felons from voting. They also resurrected poll taxes. The historical record is filled with racially derogatory statements from delegates at State constitutional conventions who believed poll taxes and other devices would suppress Black voter registration and turnout.
Their efforts succeeded. Together, these changes resulted in significant declines in voter turnout and registration, particularly among eligible Black voters. But poll taxes would burden many poor white voters, too, creating a fairly significant economically disparate impact. Poll taxes were even more burdensome due to their administration.
Many states made poll taxes cumulative: voters needed to pay the tax for this election and every previous year they had failed to pay taxes. Some jurisdictions required payment many months before the election. And others required voters to offer a receipt on Election Day as proof of payment, an additional hurdle. The Supreme Court repeatedly affirmed the constitutionality of poll taxes. In its opinion in Breedlove v.
Suttles , the Supreme Court unanimously rejected a claim from a white Georgia voter that the poll tax violated the Equal Protection Clause. By , most states had abandoned poll taxes, but they remained in effect in five: Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia. Even there, the states had eased the rules somewhat, such as limiting the cumulative effect of poll taxes.
Kennedy endorsed eliminating both poll taxes and literacy tests in his State of the Union address. After years of failed efforts and through some aggressive procedural wrangling, Congress passed the Twenty-Fourth Amendment in , abolishing poll taxes in federal elections. The debates in Congress reflected two major themes. First, Congress believed it needed to pass an amendment rather than a statute. Members argued that voter qualifications were an area exclusively reserved to the states, necessitating a constitutional amendment.
They further noted that the evidence of the impact on Black voters was not so disproportionate relative to white voters that Congress would have power to abolish poll taxes under the Fifteenth Amendment. Second, the Amendment only extended to federal elections. Poll taxes would still be permitted in state and local elections. It was an attempt to secure sufficient support to pass both Houses, a bargain that was ultimately successful.
The Amendment was quickly adopted by the required three-fourths of the states and took effect in , but not without resistance. Virginia attempted to circumvent this Amendment with a new version of the poll tax. The new Virginia law offered voters a choice: pay the tax, or file a notarized or witnessed certificate of residence at least six months before each election. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court in Harman v. Forssenius concluded that the new law contravened the Twenty-Fourth Amendment.
Virginia Board of Elections , the Supreme Court would find that poll taxes in all state and local elections were prohibited under the Equal Protection Clause. Indirect costs on voting such as the cost of obtaining documents to comply with voter identification laws, or the requirement that ex-felons pay prison debt before they are eligible to register to vote, have been unsuccessfully challenged—at least so far—as poll taxes.
Poll taxes were an obvious blight to many members of Congress in the mid-twentieth century. But amending the Constitution requires great effort: securing a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Congress and ratification from three-fourths of the state legislatures. Even though poll taxes existed in just five states when the Twenty-Fourth Amendment was ratified, they drew enough ire from enough elected representatives to warrant a legal change. But why a constitutional amendment rather than a statute?
The ratification debates over the Twenty-Fourth Amendment revealed significant concerns in Congress about the scope of its own power to regulate elections. The original Constitution provides a patchwork quilt for congressional control over federal elections and essentially no control over state elections. The Reconstruction Amendments offered possible additional avenues to regulate elections, but Congress concluded it lacked sufficient evidentiary support to intervene.
That meant only a constitutional amendment could eliminate poll taxes. First, Congress likely lacked the ability to abolish poll taxes in congressional elections. The Seventeenth Amendment would include a similar provision for Senate elections. Congress was unsure that it had the power to alter the qualifications for voters, which it believed were fixed by the States. Poll tax opponents argued that qualifications largely related to fitness for voting think age and residency restrictions and that the poll tax was unrelated to fitness.
A few even argued that Congress had the power to regulate qualifications. State legislatures direct the appointment of presidential electors.
And there is no express power to regulate presidential primaries. That left the congressional regulation of poll taxes at the federal level even more complicated. Third, Congress assuredly lacked the power to regulate poll taxes in state elections. It lacked any other identifiable basis under the original Constitution to do so.
Finally, Congress contemplated using its power under the Reconstruction Amendments, which extended power beyond the original Constitution. Congress had the power to enforce these Amendments through legislation. But Congress did not believe it had a sufficient basis to enact legislation here, either. The poll tax extended to all voters equally, and Congress was not confident it could act simply because it had a disproportionate impact on poorer voters.
Additionally, evidence gathered by Congress did not support a finding that the poll tax was inherently racially discriminatory. In the end, Congress decided it needed a constitutional amendment to abolish poll taxes. The text of the Amendment expressly extended to congressional elections, the selection of presidential electors, and presidential primaries.
But it only extended to federal elections, a more modest effort to secure sufficient congressional support. Congress hoped that the Amendment would exert practical pressure on state elections—if states wanted to keep poll taxes for state elections, they would have to develop separate voter registration systems and maintain different ballots for federal and state elections.
This pressure had little effect—four states persisted in using poll taxes in state elections.
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