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Are Long Lines the ‘New Poll Tax’?

By Michael Peshkin

Did Rachel Maddow mean to suggest racism in naming long polling place lines as “the new poll tax”? After all, poll taxes were outlawed in 1964 by the 24th Amendment, which ended a mechanism of vote suppression dating back almost a century. After the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870 (“The right of citizens of the United States to… return to article

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    Michael Peshkin makes an egregious historical error, stating that the 1964 Civil Rights Act abolished the poll tax, when in fact it was the 24th Amendment, ratified that year, that outlawed its use in federal elections, with the Supreme Court two years later ruling that such taxes in state elections violated the 14th Amendment.

    But, more important, the widespread and careless use of analogies between practices and arrangements in the Jim Crow South and voting problems today irresponsibly undermines public understanding of just how terrible conditions were for southern blacks prior to the Civil Rights Revolution. If poll taxes (and other disfranchising devices) were no worse than today’s long lines at polling booths, what was all the fuss about, historically ignorant students and others might wonder.

    Abigail Thernstrom
    Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute
    Vice-chair, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
    www.thernstrom.com

    Germany Posted by Thernstrom on Dec 1, 2008 at 3:21 PM

    Abby and colleagues discuss this article on the election-law board at

    http://tinyurl.com/lawpolltax

    Germany Posted by Michael Peshkin on Dec 5, 2008 at 8:07 AM
    Page 1 of 1 pages

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