I Want To Show You Something
One of our customers, Jan, read the story about the voter registration receipt. She sent me a copy of her poll tax in Travis County – that’s Austin – from 1963. It cost her $1.75 to vote. That was when gas was 30 cents a gallon and milk was 49 cents. Click the little one to get the big one.
Jan, who now has a different last name and doesn’t live at that address, says …… speaking of poll taxes, I still have mine from 1964 which I have saved for half a century because I knew it was important.
I paid it at Travis Cty courthouse on Jan 31, 1965, which was 8 days after the 24th amendment outlawing poll taxes was ratified. I had to present it 9 months later when I went to the polls to cast my first nat’l election vote (for LBJ of course). The old lady who filled it in could not spell the state of my birth (Illinois) although I remember trying to tell her how to do it. Luckily Texas no longer had a literacy test then or I doubt that she could have passed it.
Jan and I both wonder how many people would pay the equivalent of $13.41 to vote.
Thanks to Jan for the heads up.
There’s a “how dumb is a republican” joke in there somewhere.
As the 5-4 Old Cooters Club is heavily into misogyny, thinks racism is an era past, and is to legal scholarship what Ben the neurosurgeon Carson is to general intelligence, expect them to restore the rule of law to the days when voting was the privilege of landed white gentry. Hate to break it to you Justice Thomas, but if you pull off that trick, you’ve shot off your own proverbial foot.
1I’ve heard old folks refer to their voter registration cards as their “poll tax”. Having spent my non-voting years mostly in the midwest, it’s hard to imagine having to pay to vote. It’s hard enough now to get folks to vote. Imagine if we had to also convince them to save their money so they’d have it on Election Day. No. I misread that. Jan had to pay it when she registered to vote, is that it? Did y’all see Abbott’s comments about it’s okay to screw up redistricting? I have to go find that and show you.
2Thanks for this amazing piece of history. I’m glad you had the foresight to hang on to that receipt and save it. Jan, what reason did they give you for charging you to vote? You said it was already declared illegal and yet you had to pay it anyway. Did they tell you why? (Not that their reason would have been valid…)
3Cool. There are four or five different experts who are going to testify in the Texas voter id case that starts in September that the free ids mandated under the law are not free. Harvard has a decent study that came out too late for the Texas trial on this issue http://today.law.harvard.edu/free-voter-ids-costly-harvard-law-report-finds/ The federal judge in the Texas voter id case let the poll tax cause of action go to trial. I also saw that the lawsuits on the North Carolina law includes a claim on the poll tax.
4Marge Wood-A-Butt’s comments were in yesterday’s post called “prepared to Be Shocked”.(July 15)
5Bay Area Houston: Greg Abbott next legal defeat: Redistricting
6bayareahouston.blogspot.com/2014/…/greg-abbott-next-legal-defeat.htm…
1 day ago – If Greg Abbott was your attorney, you would probably be in jail. As the State’s top lawyer, … Abbott is on course to lose yet another one concerning redistricting. Michael Li at the Brennan … Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) …
Actually I do remember why folks were still required to do the poll tax thing even after it was unconstitutional. It seems that in certain states there were a helluva lot of grumpy losers such as governors. They told the populace that they would have to think over the abolition of poll tax, make up their minds as to whether or not the law was going to be challenged in state court on some grounds and then give their say so on the subject. Pity, ain’t it.
7What are these 6s written in for city, county and state?
8Doesn’t the Book of Revelations say 666 is the number of the Devil?
Come to think of it ….
Just wow, just, oh comma wow. While the good old white boys who wrote the US Constitution had some decent ideas, many of them were also slave owners. Not exactly a bunch of ethical men. But with Amendments, we have evolved, somewhat. Seems we almost arrived in the 60s, then Reagan reversed course in the 80s and we’ve been treading water and losing for over thirty years.
Then came Dubya and Darth Dicky. Just ouch and a double damn disaster, the 5-4 Old Cooter Court.
President Obama has been trying to make a course correction, but Congress is like a ship without power steering and all Republican butts deployed as drag chutes.
This year folks! 2014, please vote out the crazies. Seriously, 2016 might be too late.
Sip of water while we’ve still got it, Marge Wood?
9The modern poll tax is in the form of the cost of a voter ID. May those repressive laws all be overturned.
10Everybody should look at that study Kyle mentioned:
http://today.law.harvard.edu/free-voter-ids-costly-harvard-law-report-finds/
“Obtaining a “free” voter identification card can typically cost an individual between $75 and $175. When legal fees are factored in, the cost can increase to over $1,000. These are two of the conclusions drawn from an analysis of actual expenses incurred by individuals who needed to obtain identification cards in three states that had recently passed new voting requirements.”
Use this to smack down anybody who claims that people can get voter ID cards “free” and that everybody should already have ID anyway.
11I’m sure I’m not the only one who noticed the union label. 🙂
12Marge Wood asked when I had to pay my poll tax.
13It was an annual tax that had to be paid by January 31, otherwise one could not vote that year. The trick was to remember where your receipt was in November when election time came. To vote, I had to present the receipt. It was rumored that there may have been people who sold their poll tax receipts…..
The holdout states that continued to require them after the 24th Amendment was ratified were taken to court and in spring of 1966 they were declared unconstitutional, TX being the first to get nailed on this.
Oh boy, this just makes me sad. I am truly happy we still have people who can bear witness, but saddened by those who in this day and age a) don’t vote and b) don’t understand and/or vote their interests. What can we do ??? Jan, thanks for sharing and making us think. I appreciate you.
14We ought to still charge thirteen dollars but then give each voter a ‘super mega-millions powerballs lotto ticket.’ Then watch turnout approach 100%.
15Wonderful discussion. I can see it now: “Aaargh, i missed paying my poll tax and here we are with this huge election coming up.” I truly believe (and am doing it) that we oldsters must start going up to people and asking them if they are registered to vote. Battleground Texas is doing a lot of good in that department. Thing is, if you find someone who is unsure, you can initiate a discussion about the importance of voting and if the person really can’t vote, say “but you can support a candidate”. Yes. They can and often will. Tomorrow’s our weekly “meet at Strange Brew on S. Manchaca in Austin and find ways to talk to folks”. Feel free to join us if you are from the Austin area. Tues. night at STUD we had a lady met at Strange Brew at our meeting. Slow and steady.
16Forgot. Strange Brew, near Manchaca Library, at or around 10 am on Friday, any Friday.
17Couldn’t help but notice the signature of the clerk is not her given name. When I lived in Midland in the ’70s, the paper there would not print my given name with a news photo, even tho I asked them to, and insisted on my husband’s name with my Mrs. Progress happens.
18Here in Florida it cost me over $100 and more than a few hours to renew my driver’s liscence that I have had since 1992. I had to get a copy of my Social Security Card, birth certificate, two forms or bills showing my address and just to make it more difficult for women, wait for it. Florida women have to provide marriage liscenses even if married multiple times because terrorism or something, nothing of course to do with voting.
19Back in Chicago, growing up in a Cat’lic family, there was nothing we kids liked better than a wake/funeral. Invariably, the deceased was some super-annuated great-great aunt someone or other whose eternal memory for a 7-year-old would be seeing her teeth next to her in a glass of beer while she slept off her last Christmas dinner.
My cousin, Jesus Hachecristo, and I would go up to the casket to “pray” every 15 minutes, but really, just to see a dead body of a near-stranger and dare each other to touch it.
Our uncle, Jimmy “Barstool” Grobnik was usually on hand, and we asked him once why they put coins on the dead peoples’ eyes.
“Poll tax,” he answered, without batting a lash.
20I just paid $16 the other day so my 18 year old could actually use her voter ID on election day. She wants to vote so bad! Yes, it still cost money to vote because we force people to purchase a govt issued ID. Apparently the student ID, SS card and voter reg card are not enough.
21That $13.41 is far more than what you get per day on a Lone Star card. That’s way more than a day’s food for some folks. And back in the ’60s, when I was being paid $1.75 per hundred pounds of cotton I picked, and so was my mother, it was a hardship. But I remember riding to the polls at someone’s house every year to vote. I didn’t get to go in, had to stay in the car, but my parents both voted, every year. And I’m pretty certain they never once voted Republican. My first vote was in 68, when I turned 21. Voting at 18 came much later. And to this day, I can truthfully say that I have never, not once, knowingly voted for a Republican. It won’t start this year, either.
22Very interesting thread, and as Marge Wood said we must always stress the importance of voting, or at least of supporting a candidate if someone isn’t eligible to actually vote.
23Not only did you have to pay the tax, it had to be paid between the end of the November election and January 1 of the following year in order to vote in the elections which were held later in that year– eg Sept primary or November election.
24An South Texas Hispanic gentleman once told me that if he had had $1.75 he would not have wasted it on something as worthless as voting. This was when the old Democrats controlled elections in South Texas.
Rhea, thanks so much for posting that link. I shared it on FB.
25