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The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1964) prohibited poll taxes in federal elections; five states (Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia) continued to require poll taxes for voters in state elections. By this ruling, the Supreme Court banned the use of poll taxes in state elections.
When the 24th Amendment was ratified in 1964, five states still retained a poll tax: Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia. The amendment prohibited a poll tax for voters in federal elections, but it was not until 1966 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in Harper v.
Poll taxes became a tool of disenfranchisement in the South during Jim Crow, following the end of Reconstruction. Payment of a poll tax was a prerequisite to the registration for voting in a number of states until 1965. The tax emerged in some states of the United States in the late nineteenth century as part of the Jim Crow laws.
Although the Twenty-fourth Amendment—which banned the use of poll taxes in federal elections— was ratified a year earlier, Johnson's administration and the bill's sponsors did not include a provision in the voting rights bill banning poll taxes in state elections because they feared courts would strike down the legislation as unconstitutional.
Voters in 41 states will take policymaking into their own hands as they decide the fate of 146 ballot measures on topics as diverse as abortion rights, election laws, workers' rights and even drug ...
An average of the polls on Amendment 1 show that Floridians are divided on the issue, with 35 percent in favor of partisan school board elections, 38 percent in opposition and 27 percent undecided.
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The poll tax mechanism varied on a state-by-state basis; in Alabama, the poll tax was cumulative, meaning that a man had to pay all poll taxes due from the age of twenty-one onward in order to vote. In other states, poll taxes had to be paid for several years before being eligible to vote. Enforcement of poll tax laws was patchy.