The Twenty-Fourth Amendment

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 Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The Twenty-fourth Amendment prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 27, 1962, and was ratified by the states on January 23, 1964. Poll taxes appeared in southern states after Reconstruction as a measure to prevent African Americans from voting, and had been held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1937 decision Breedlove v. Suttles. At the time of this amendment's passage, five states still retained a poll tax: Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi. The amendment made the poll tax clearly unconstitutional at the federal level. However, it wasn't until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) that all poll taxes (for both state and federal elections) were officially declared unconstitutional because they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

 

Imagine that you are finally old enough to vote in your first election. But, do you have enough money? Money, to vote? Not long ago, citizens in some states had to pay a fee to vote in a national election. This fee was called a poll tax. On January 23, 1964, the United States ratified the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any poll tax in elections for federal officials.

Many Southern states adopted a poll tax in the late 1800s. This meant that even though the 15th Amendment gave former slaves the right to vote, many poor people, both blacks and whites, did not have enough money to vote. "Do you know I've never voted in my life, never been able to exercise my right as a citizen because of the poll tax?" "Mr. Trout" to Mr. Pike, interviewer, Atlanta, Georgia. American Life Histories, 1936 - 1940. [in picture] More than 20 years after "Mr. Trout" spoke those words, the poll tax was abolished. At the ceremony in 1964 formalizing the 24th Amendment, President Lyndon Johnson noted that: "There can be no one too poor to vote." Thanks to the 24th Amendment, the right of all U.S. citizens to freely cast their votes has been secured.