POLITICAL EDUCATION, CONSERVATIVE ANALYSIS
POLITICS, SOCIETY, & THE SOVEREIGN STATE
Website of Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr.
WITH COMMENTARY & ANNOTATIONS
Amendment XXIV, Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
Amendment XXIV, Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Ratification of the Twenty-fourth Amendment marked the culmination of an endeavor begun in Congress in 1939 to effect elimination of the poll tax as a qualification for voting in federal elections. Property qualifications extend back to colonial days, but the poll tax itself as a qualification was instituted in eleven States of the South following the end of Reconstruction, although at the time of the ratification of this Amendment only five States still retained it.\1\ Congress viewed the qualification as ``an obstacle to the proper exercise of a citizen's franchise'' and expected its removal to ``provide a more direct approach to participation by more of the people in their government.'' Congress similarly thought a constitutional amendment necessary,\2\ inasmuch as the qualifications had previously escaped constitutional challenge on several grounds.\3\ However, not long after ratification of the Amendment Congress by statute had impuned the continuing validity of the poll tax as a qualification in state elections\4\ and the Supreme Court had voided it as a violation of the equal protection clause.\5\
\2\H.R. Rep. No. 1821, 87th Cong., 2d Sess. 3, 5 (1962).
\3\Breedlove v. Suttles, 302 U.S. 277 (1937); Saunders v. Wilkins, 152 F. 2d 235 (4th Cir. 1945), cert. denied, 328 U.S. 870 (1946); Butler v. Thompson, 97 F. Supp. 17 (E.D. Va), aff'd, 341 U.S. 937 (1951).
\4\Voting Rights Act of 1965, 10, 79 Stat. 442, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1973h. For the results of actions instituted by the Attorney General under direction of this section, see United States v. Texas, 252 F. Supp. 234 (W.D. Tex.) (three-judge court). aff'd on other grounds, 384 U.S. 155 (1966); United States v. Alabama, 252 F. Supp. 95 (M.D. Ala. 1966) (three-judge court).
\5\Harper v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966).
In Harman v. Forssenius,\6\ the Court struck down a Virginia statute which eliminated the poll tax as an absolute qualification for voting in federal elections and gave federal voters the choice either of paying the tax or of filing a certificate of residence six months before the election. Viewing the latter requirement as imposing upon voters in federal elections an onerous procedural requirement which was not imposed on those who continued to pay the tax, the Court unanimously held the law to conflict with the new Amendment by penalizing those who chose to exercise a right guaranteed them by the Amendment.
The foregoing commentary and annotations were originally published in a document sponsored by the United States Senate on the
United States Government Printing Office website.