Twenty-Fourth Amendment

ONLY FIVE STATES still imposed a poll tax on their voters in August of 1962 when the Twenty-Fourth Amendment was proposed. This amendment, also known as the anti-poll-tax amendment, made it illegal for the states to require voters to pay a poll tax to be eligible to vote in presidential and congressional elections. Once submitted to the states for ratification, it took less than two years for the amendment to become part of the Constitution. Then, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 gave the attorney general, under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the power to prosecute any state that made the payment of a poll tax a [Page 801]prerequisite to the voting process. The act also allowed private individuals to sue such entities for imposing such a tax. Finally, in 1966, the Supreme Court determined that the poll tax violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and therefore it was formally declared unconstitutional, not only for presidential and congressional elections, but also for state and local elections.

From the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, a poll tax (a fixed amount of money required to be paid prior to being allowed to register to vote in presidential, congressional, state, and local elections) was used by a number of southern states for the stated purpose of ensuring that each person only voted once per election cycle.

However, the true reason for this tax was to ensure that the only eligible voters in these elections were wealthy and white. Even after the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which extended the right to vote to all races, many southern states found a way to continue their discriminatory practices. This was achieved by including a grandfather clause within the poll tax allowing men who had either a father or grandfather eligible to vote prior to the abolition of slavery to vote without paying the tax. This ensured that Native Americans, a large portion of poor whites (for the most part immigrants), and African Americans were effectively disenfranchised.

While there were proposals over the years to abolish this tax, it was not until 1962 that an amendment was passed declaring such taxes illegal in presidential and congressional elections. Congress may not have been able to pass such an amendment until the 1960s, but all but five of the states had, by this time, voluntarily rescinded their poll taxes. On January 23, 1964, poll taxes were no longer allowed in federal elections.

The Supreme Court first interpreted this amendment in 1965 in Harman v. Forssenius. It determined that Virginia's prerequisites, the requirement of filing a residency certificate before each election or, alternatively, paying the poll tax, prior to citizens being allowed to vote was in violation of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment. As such, the Court struck down this requirement.

Then in 1966, in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, the court declared the use of a poll tax in any election within the United States to be unconstitutional and in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

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