Remember the "Poll Tax"?

[ConcernedNonpartisan]

I'm not sure how many will. Way back when.....as I was growing up there was a tax levied for the "privilege" of voting. Although it was a small tax (in Mass. it was $2) I'm sure that it deterred many potential voters. Especially the very poor.
At some point, the Supreme Court struck down the poll tax as unconstitutional.
Now many states are requiring a government photo ID to vote. Since these ID's aren't free, isn't this just another form of poll tax?

[INdemo]

1. That is a very good point and one that could be the basis for a lawsuit

[whistle]

2. Georgia has a poll tax I believe

[journalist3072]

7. No; their voter ID law was put on hold by a judge

When the state of Georgia passed their voter ID law in 2005, a federal judge struck it down saying it was tantamout to a poll tax.

The lawmakers in Georgia went back and revised the law to make the ID cards free for whomever needed them, and fortunately, the judge said that still was not good enough, and that they needed to do some more work on the law before he was comfortable w/ it.

[salin]

11. I didn't realize it was turned back a second time.

Very good news. It was my understanding that there were few places from where to get the IDs - and the sites were very hard to get to from various impoverished parts of the state -- esp if one was reliant upon public transportation.

[journalist3072]

13. Yep, very good news indeed. And here is a WaPo article

About the judge strikind down the revised version of the law.

The judge commended lawmakers for revising the law to make the IDs free, but said more work needed to be done.

Anyway, here is the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/13/AR2006071300168.html

[Freddie Stubbs]

18. The judge's ruling may have expired

State's voter ID requirements back in force

By CARLOS CAMPOS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/01/06
The state of Georgia's on-again, off-again effort to require voters to show photo identification at the polls is back on — for now.

The State Election Board on Friday agreed to launch an extensive education campaign to let voters know they will need one of six forms of government-issued photo identification when they cast a ballot in elections to be held in September and November.

Judges in both state and federal court halted enforcement of the voter ID law for the July primaries, ruling in favor of groups who argued that the law posed an unnecessary impediment to voting. But lawyers for the state, during a brief closed door session of Friday's election board meeting, said the rulings applied only to the primaries.

Beginning next week, voters will hear public service announcements on radio and TV letting them know about the change in the law. A brochure will also be mailed to another 305,074 registered voters who might lack either a state-issued driver's license or identification card.

more: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/election06/stories/2006/09/01/0901voterid.html

[wakeme2008]

3. These are worst than the Poll Tax.

The Poll Tax could be paid at the voting place. But these government photo id only are issued at select locations that the ppl WITHOUT cars (no drivers license) have to go to and maybe more than ONE time if the person issuing the ID does not like your proof of citizenship.

[alarimer]

4. I think that is the argument being made about ID requirements

I don't understand why a voter registration card is not sufficient as ID. NOW just did a story on this. They interviewed several people (including a young woman who registers voters but who cannot vote herself because she can't get an ID due to problems with her birth certificate- I can't remember exactly the problem). The also interviewed and elderly African-American woman who does not drive. In order to get a photo id (which she has never needed, having lived and worked in the same town all her life), she would have to find someone (she has no relatives) to drive here 30 miles to the county seat because there is no office in her town.

It is more than the cost, though. They could hand them out for free and it would still be a hardship for enough people to disenfranchise them.

The guy who proposed the law in Georgia seems to think there is a rash of voter fraud going on. I don't think that's really true. There are ways too keep voter rolls updated (so you don't have dead people voting, for example).

[SharonAnn]

16. The epidemic is Election Fraud, not Voter Fraud, except for GOP here

Here in Tennessee, the president of the Tennessee Federation of Republican Women was arrested last week "on charges of voter fraud, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said Friday. ... The Tipton county woman is charged with knowingly voting in the wrong district of the county during early voting on July 14."

... "Ward is the 17th president of the state Federation of Republican Women which was founded in 1955. The group's Web site touts Ward's political experience, saying she "brings a lifetime of experience that began in Memphis politics in the 1970s"

... "State Republican Party officials have been emphasizing voter fraud problems in Memphis during the current election season."

Just another one of things that make you go "Hunh?"""

[LeftishBrit]

5. A form of 'poll tax' led to the defeat of the last British Tory government

http://www.answers.com/topic/poll-tax

Not quite sure how it compares with the American system; but may be of someinterest.

[Igel]

10. The poll taxes were equivalent in many ways.

A fixed tax on each 'poll' (a now archaic word for 'head').

In the US, people have confused that sort of tax with the 'polls', i.e., the voting stations. After the franchise was extended to various minority groups, a tax was frequently instituted such that children of people who formerly could vote didn't have to pay it; meanwhile, the children of people who couldn't vote--minorities--had to pay the poll tax. Quite an odd arrangement, except that if you were required to pay the tax but didn't you weren't allowed to vote. Set the poll tax at an unconscionably high level and you've de facto re-disenfranchised a set of people.

A bit of folk etymology and abductive reasoning did the rest, so now 'poll tax' in the US is usually taken to be the kind of tax that never existed on paper, but which served as a kind of voting tax. The idea of a poll tax that's quite unrelated to voting makes no sense to many Americans.

[Solo_in_MD]

6. Some states are waving costs for IDs and are using mobile stations

address lack of access to DMV.

[Sherman A1]

9. That's the alleged story in MO

however, one must have a certified copy of a birth certificate ($15.00) in order to get the I.D. So Yes, it is a poll tax and the other side can claim anything they want to, but if it walks like a duck........

[journalist3072]

8. An oldie but goodie quote from Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)

It's also important to note that during the Jim Crow days, they not only used poll taxes, but literacy tests, to keep African-Americans from voting.

And in the midst of the Florida debacle in 2000, then state Representative Tom Feeney (R-FL) said in the Palm Beach Post that perhaps we should go back to the old days of literacy tests. He said "Voter confusion is not a reason for whining or crying or having a revote. It may be a reason to require literacy tests."

[SoyCat]

12. And they used literacy tests fairly recently as well. My mother was

forced to read before she could vote in 1950s NC. And, it might be interesting to note that my mother is white.

[plusfiftyfive]

14. Reading test

Yes, I had to pass a reading test in Mass in the 1960's !!!

I am white and was in COLLEGE at the time, 21 yrs old.

[SoyCat]

15. My mother said it was humiliating. The woman who made her read was

in the audience at her high school graduation and STILL made her read. Tests like that were just wrong. I've known two very informed completely illiterate people who had the childhood misfortune of being forced to quit school in order to care for their families. Many elderly people lived through some very hard times and it would be a shame if they couldn't vote as a result. Let's hope we never return to that.

[plusfiftyfive]

17. Literacy

Yes, the adult literacy rate in the USA in the 50's and 60's was less than 80% for sure.
All people who registered to vote had to read aloud to the clerk, which was sort of stupid because they had to read a form and sign it after they read an abstruse passage of he Mass General Laws to the clerk.

Thankfully they weren't required to answer any questions about the passage, because it was arcane and probably an old lawbook passage, having little or no meaning in the 60's. This reading recitationwas easy compared to questions asked of black voters in Mississippi about MS history... very often never asked of white voters.