Amendment XXIV

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

English: Poll taxes are not allowed. One shall not be denied the right to vote because one cannot pay a tax. Congress has the power to implement the legislation on the states.

History: Under the 15th Amendment, Blacks were now allowed to vote. However, those people then had to face the racists that opposed their right to vote. Jim Crow laws, implemented in the previous Confederate states after reconstruction, used violence, literacy tests, and poll taxes to disenfranchise blacks. These poll taxes that were implemented not only hurt Blacks, but also hurt poorer White folk. Even worse was that there was no federal bureau to regulate the taxes because they were considered state taxes. These Jim Crow laws stayed in effect until JFK came into presidency and changed the racial scenery of the country through Civil Rights.  So on January 23, 1964, the states ratified the 24th Amendment to rid poll taxes that hampered many citizens’ rights to vote.

Effect on US: Presently, if you watch the news you would know there has been a lot of fuss over whether or not voter ID is legal or not. Well, that falls under the 24th amendment because not having ID stops people from voting, much in the same way poll taxes and literacy tests stopped blacks from voting, which was the cause of this amendment. The strange part of the voter ID hoopla is that it affects blacks the most, once again, weird? But nonetheless, this amendment doesn’t/didn’t have much effect because poll taxes stopped once the law was set into place so yes, it does play affect at all times because it stops taxing or abridging of the right to vote to anyone, but no ones would dare try to do something like this because chaos would ensue.

Effect on us: This law doesn’t really affect me personally because I think I’m a little more educated than most people in the country, there are a lot of base people in the country so literacy test is not a problem. Most people are forced to have some form of ID be it school or drivers licence, of which both I have. So the only annoying thing that would stop me from voting is paying a poll, so that wouldn’t be good. I enjoy saving my bucks where I can.