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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.
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.
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.
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.
Poll taxes are regressive, meaning the higher someone's income is, the lower the tax is as a proportion of income: for example, a $100 tax on an income of $10,000 is a 1% tax rate, while $100 tax on a $500 income is 20%. Its acceptance or "neutrality" depends on the balance between the tax demanded and the resources of the population.
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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In fact, Florida's Amendment 3 is one of the most expensive ballot-measure campaigns in the nation: Supporters, led by the medical cannabis company Trulieve, have donated $101 million to the race ...