Thursday, November 30, 2017
The recent Journal Star news story, “Voting rights under attack,” would have readers believe that we in the United States are returning to the days of poll taxes, grandfather clauses and literacy tests to prevent people from voting.
The only evidence presented is voter ID laws in some states and gerrymandering in red states....
http://www.pjstar.com/opinion/20171129/letter-voting-rights-not-under-attack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinn_v._United_States
238 U.S. 34, 35 S. Ct. 926; 59 L. Ed. 1340; (1915), grandfather clauses.
Poll taxes: Eisenhower's GOP platform in 1954 urged the passage of the poll tax amendment. Harman v Forssenius and Harper v Virginia Board are the two landmark cases.
More recently, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in Frank v Walker, found that Wisconsin's voter ID was a poll tax, and ordered changes. In Missouri, voter ID was found to violate the right to free and open elections, so they changed the state constitution.
Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinn_v._United_States
238 U.S. 34, 35 S. Ct. 926; 59 L. Ed. 1340; (1915), grandfather clauses.
Poll taxes: Eisenhower's GOP platform in 1954 urged the passage of the poll tax amendment. Harman v Forssenius and Harper v Virginia Board are the two landmark cases.
More recently, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in Frank v Walker, found that Wisconsin's voter ID was a poll tax, and ordered changes. In Missouri, voter ID was found to violate the right to free and open elections, so they changed the state constitution.
Wikipedia:
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided that literacy tests used as a qualification for voting in federal elections be administered wholly in writing and only to persons who had completed six years of formal education.
In part to curtail the use of literacy tests, Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Act prohibited jurisdictions from administering literacy tests to citizens who attained a sixth-grade education in an American school in which the predominant language was Spanish, such as schools in Puerto Rico.[3] The Supreme Court upheld this provision in Katzenbach v. Morgan (1966). And see Oregon v. Mitchell (1970)..
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