Appointment boards in each county could register voters who were veterans or descendants of earlier voters (whites). And it gets harder when, two months before the 2020 election, five Trump(-appointed) judges join a Bush(-appointed) colleague to uphold a poll tax on people with felony convictions in a swing state that has disenfranchised approximately a fifth of its black voters. Voting Rights Act of 1965. The 15th Amendment of the Constitution was ratified on February 3, 1870.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. The Supreme Court blessed this chicanery on Thursday by refusing to reinstate Hinkle’s injunction, without bothering to explain its reasoning. They were also about limiting the political power of African Americans, most of whom were loyal Republicans because of Abraham Lincoln. The Supreme Court all but guaranteed that nearly 1 million Floridians will be unable to vote in the 2020 election because of unpaid court debts in a shattering order handed down on Thursday. ", Woodward, C. Vann. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated many of the barriers that Black voters in the South encountered, such as poll taxes and literacy tests.

And all of this just takes the re-enfranchisement process (pay up, and you can vote) at face value. The clause gave white voters an unfair advantage since the grandfathers of Black voters had been enslaved prior to 1866 and were, thus, barred from voting. Texas adopted the poll tax in 1903, reducing the number of Black voters in the state from about 100,000 in … 1997); see also Completion, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed. After enslavement, large numbers of Black people in the South worked for white farm owners as tenant farmers or sharecroppers in exchange for a small cut of the profits from the crops grown. But Florida was still controlled by Republicans, and Republicans then turned around and said, “We don’t like this kind of progress. Which means that even though the Supreme Court has ruled that a poll tax, a financial cost to voting, is plainly unconstitutional, that is not, the state argues, the case for someone if they have a criminal conviction.

Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the U.S. Confederate States presidential election of 1861, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Disenfranchisement_after_the_Reconstruction_era&oldid=975431012, African-American history between emancipation and the civil rights movement, History of racial segregation in the United States, History of voting rights in the United States, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from February 2017, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. The Oklahoma Legislature, for example, responded to the Supreme Court ruling by passing a new law that automatically registered the voters who’d been on the rolls when the grandfather clause was in effect. Just to back up for a moment, there are 6 million people in this country who are disenfranchised because of a criminal conviction.

Poll taxes were abolished in the 1960s. Poll taxes to disenfranchise black voters were not always so indirect. Second, under the 24th Amendment, which abolished poll taxes. All rights reserved. The Florida Supreme Court building in Tallahassee, Florida. The Grandfather clause stripped them of their right to vote by requiring them to pay taxes, take literacy tests or constitutional quizzes, and overcome other barriers simply to cast a ballot. Help Us Stick Around for Many More.

Oklahoma’s grandfather clause stated the following: “No person shall be registered as an elector of this state or be allowed to vote in any election held herein, unless he be able to read and write any section of the Constitution of the state of Oklahoma; but no person who was, on January 1, 1866, or any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under any form of government, or who at that time resided in some foreign nation, and no lineal descendant of such person, shall be denied the right to register and vote because of his inability to so read and write sections of such Constitution.”. All contents © 2020 The Slate Group LLC. This was also used against poor white sharecroppers. Even if African Americans managed to pass a literacy test, pay a poll tax, or complete other hurdles, they could be punished for voting in other ways. Despite the high court’s finding that grandfather clauses were unconstitutional, Oklahoma and other states continued to pass laws that made it impossible for African Americans to vote. By joining Slate Plus you support our work and get exclusive content. First, under the Equal Protection clause of the 14 th Amendment, for discriminating against poor people. In Florida, court fee LFOs include, among many others, a $50 application fee and $100 minimum assistance fee for a public defender (who, yes, represent people without money), a $100 minimum cost of prosecution fee, a $50 per month probation fee (for people found indigent; otherwise it averages around $100), a 4 percent administrative fee, and, incredibly, a $25 plus $5 per month fee to enroll in a payment plan. Circuit Court of Appeals swept away Hinkle’s injunction in an extremely rare and suspicious maneuver. What’s been happening in the courts recently, and what happened at the 11th Circuit? One out of 10 adult citizens in the state—disenfranchised. the legislature. View object record. This meant Black voters had to depend on states and the local police for support, which was seldom given, and so these voters were exposed to violence. Disenfranchised people sued in federal court, arguing that SB 7066 and Amendment 4 (as interpreted by the Florida Supreme Court) were unconstitutional in three ways.

Poll taxes were yet another way that states could “legally” disenfranchise Blacks, as well as Native Americans and poor Whites who immigrated after the Civil War. If you value our work, please disable your ad blocker. Even if it’s OK for a state to say you owe $500 or $1,000 or $5,000 before you can vote again, which I think is abhorrent, but let’s just say the state can do that. Luck and Lagoa already participated in the decision to lift Hinkle’s injunction. California, with eleven representatives, had a total vote of 644,790.
It’s a huge number of people, and one-quarter of them reside in a single state, Florida, because Florida had one of the strictest rules in the country about voting with a criminal conviction. Poll taxes are a kind of tax that requires someone to pay a fixed rate in order to exercise his (and after the 19th amendment , … Moreover, three Trump appointees on the 11th Circuit have serious conflicts of interest. Indiana, with thirteen representatives, had a total vote of 565,216. reapportionment. Richard H. Pildes, 'Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon'. The second way is to take the legal analysis at face value. Where People Convicted of Felonies Can Vote in the U.S. Oregon v. Mitchell: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact, Interracial Marriage Laws History and Timeline, Indian Citizenship Act: Granted Citizenship but Not Voting Rights, Bloody Sunday and the Fight for Voting Rights in Selma. Disenfranchisement News: Arizona eliminates “poll tax” for people with first-time felony offenses August 09, 2019 Arizona eliminates "poll tax" for people with first-time felony offenses, Florida's legal battle on new voting rights measure continues, and more in our latest Disenfranchisement News .
For a few weeks, there was widespread celebration across Florida, and people who had been repeatedly disenfranchised began to register to vote. These groups terrorized Black communities with night rides during which they would burn crosses on lawns, set homes alight, or force their way into Black households to intimidate, brutalize, or lynch their targets. "Negro Disfranchisement in Arkansas. The taxes were generally $1-2 per year, which was more than most Black sharecroppers tenant farmers who give a part of each crop as rent could pay.

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