Twenty-fourth Amendment To The United States Constitution - Post-ratification Law

Post-ratification Law

Arkansas effectively repealed its poll tax for all elections with Amendment 51 to the Arkansas Constitution at the November 1964 general election, several months after this amendment was ratified, though the poll-tax language was not completely stricken from its Constitution until Amendment 85 in 2008. Of the five states originally affected by this amendment, Arkansas was the only one to voluntarily repeal its poll tax; the other four retained their taxes until they were struck down in 1966 by Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (see below), though Federal district courts in Alabama & Texas struck down their poll taxes less than two months before Harper.

The state of Virginia reacted by allowing an "escape clause" to the poll tax. In lieu of paying the poll tax, a prospective voter could file paperwork to gain a certificate establishing a place of residence in Virginia. The papers would have to be filed six months in advance, a measure expected to decrease the number of legal voters. In the 1965 Supreme Court decision Harman v. Forssenius, the Court unanimously found such measures unconstitutional and declared that for federal elections, "the poll tax is abolished absolutely as a prerequisite to voting, and no equivalent or milder substitute may be imposed."

While not directly related to the Twenty-fourth Amendment, the 1966 Supreme Court case Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections ruled that the poll tax was unconstitutional at every level, not just for federal elections. The Harper decision relied upon the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, rather than the Twenty-Fourth Amendment. As such, issues related to whether burdens on voting are equivalent to poll taxes have usually been litigated on Equal Protection grounds since.

The 2008 case Crawford v. Marion County Election Board ruled that an Indiana law that required voters to obtain and present picture identification such as a driver's license was constitutional because the Supreme Court found no substantial burden imposed on voters and preventing voter fraud was a valid governmental objective. The lawsuit continued in the 2010 case League of Women Voters, et al. v. Todd Rokita where the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that requiring photo identification for voting was within the legislature's power.