The New Poll Tax

The new Poll Tax: the time it takes to vote.

Why does it take 3-4 hours to vote in 2008? Why does it happen in poor neighborhoods? Rachel Maddow addresses the perennial problem.



via Ezra Klein:

"The poll tax was a sly system of disenfranchisement used in the Jim Crow era to disenfranchise Southern blacks. Aware that the Constitution now assured everyone the "right" to vote, Southern states imposed a voting fee heavy enough that African-Americans would deem it a right too pricey to exercise. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, of course, did away will all that. But as Rachel Maddow says in the clip above, voting lines are just another form of poll tax. They are a time tax. How much is four hours worth to the average voter? How many voters can take four hours off from their job, or their family, to stand at a precinct? We tend to frame long voting lines as an inspiring vision of democracy, but they're quite the opposite: They are disenfranchisement in action. A longer line does not simply mean more people are voting. It means more people are not voting, as they could not afford the time tax."

NOTE: Actually, the 24th Amendment, passed by Congress in 1962 and ratified as of January 23, 1964, abolished "any poll tax or other tax" that denied or abridged the right to vote. It was not enough.

It took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to actually get African-Americans registered and into polling places throughout the South.

By the way, Lyndon Johnson, Democrat from Texas, should be credited with the greatest act of political courage in modern American history for his leadership on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of '65. A large majority of his fellow white Southerners turned against him and his party, but (pressured by King and the Civil Rights Movement) he saved America's soul.

It's now time for another Democrat. OBAMA!