THE NEW POLL TAX

Anyone younger than 40 will not remember that many Americans mostly in the South used to have to pay to vote. It was called the "poll tax," and the unvarnished purpose of this $1.50 assessment was to price poor people (especially poor African-Americans) out of the voting booth.

But the Supreme Court struck down this ugly economic barrier to the ballot box in 1966, so that was that, right? Wrong! Never underestimate the creativity of the right-wingers and selfish money powers who're determined to keep poor folks down in order to keep themselves on top.

Georgia know has taken the lead in this modern-day race to the political bottom. Led by a know-nothing piece of nastiness, Gov. Sonny Perdue, the Republican Majority in the legislature has pushed through a new law taxing poor people who want to vote. Their law requires that anyone without a drivers license must pay $20 for a state ID card in order to get into a voting booth. Guess which groups in Georgia are least likely to have drivers licenses? The poor, the Black, and the elderly or all of the above.

Well, says Governor Sonny, this is all about the sanctity of the vote stopping ineligible people from getting into the booth. Yet, Georgia's top election official says she can find not even one case of such fraud in recent years. Instead, most voter fraud involves absentee ballots, which tend to be cast by Republicans. Guess what? Absentee voters are not covered by the new ID requirement.

Even uglier, the state is not selling its voter ID cards in areas where poor, Black, and elderly folks mostly live so they would have to travel out-of-county to buy one. The city of Atlanta, for example, has no location selling the cards!

This Jim Hightower saying... Georgia's ID law is a disgraceful, un-American act of voter exclusion. If it stands, you can expect this revived poll tax to come to your state. To fight it, call the ACLU: 1-888-567-ACLU.

Sources:

"Georgia's New Poll Tax," The New York Times, September 12, 2005.