The Twenty-fourth Amendment
Poll taxes
Bans poll taxes and other taxes as a condition of voting in federal elections.
Ratified 1964 · 3 minute read
Published by Quasi-Legal Institute · Report an error
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.
In plain language
No payment to vote
A government cannot require someone to pay a poll tax, or any other tax, before voting in a federal election. This includes primaries.
What a poll tax was
A poll tax is a fee a person must pay in order to vote. After Reconstruction, Southern states used poll taxes, along with literacy tests and other devices, to keep Black citizens and many poor white citizens from voting. Because the tax was usually small but had to be paid in advance and sometimes for past years, it reached people with little money.
By 1962, when Congress proposed the amendment, five states still required poll taxes in federal elections. It was ratified in January 1964.
State elections and the courts
The amendment names only federal elections. Poll taxes in state and local elections were struck down in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966), where the Court held that making voting depend on wealth violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In Harman v. Forssenius (1965), the Court struck down a Virginia law that let people skip the poll tax in federal elections only by filing an annual certificate of residence by a deadline months earlier. The Court said the extra requirement was designed to discourage people from using their constitutional right.