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A poll tax is a tax of a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. Various privileges of citizenship, including voter registration or issuance of driving licenses and resident hunting and fishing licenses, were conditioned on payment of poll taxes to encourage the collection of this tax revenue.
President Harry S. Truman established the President's Committee on Civil Rights, which among other issues investigated the poll tax. Considering that opposition to federal poll tax regulation in 1948 was claimed as based on the Constitution, the Committee noted that a constitutional amendment might be the best way to proceed.
Suttles (1937) that the Constitution did not bar states from requiring a poll tax to vote, the NCAPT focused on federal protections rather than trying to achieve state action. [5] To achieve those ends, they built coalitions with major civil rights organizations, labor groups, and liberal political organizations. [2]
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.
Forssenius the Supreme Court ruled that poll taxes or "equivalent or milder substitutes" cannot be imposed on voters. [citation needed] 1966. Tax payment and wealth requirements for voting in state elections are prohibited by the Supreme Court in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections. [25] The poll tax would remain on the books, unenforceable ...
Poll taxes disenfranchised Mexican Americans because their low wages made payment of the tax a hardship. [158] Lulu B. White, president of the Houston chapter of the NAACP in the 1930s and state director of the organization in the 1940s, worked for anti-poll tax initiatives and held rallies against poll taxes, as part of her civil rights platform.
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.
After the American Civil War, all African-American men were granted voting rights, but poll taxes or language tests were used to limit and suppress the ability to register or cast a ballot. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 improved voting access.