Va. leading the way on voting rights
Law improving access runs counter to commonwealth’s dismal history of disenfranchisement
The commonwealth has amended its franchise — the new “Voting Rights Act of Virginia” is now on the books — and the national press has taken notice. “Virginia, the Old Confederacy’s Heart, Becomes a Voting Rights Bastion,” ran the April 2 headline in The New York Times.
The paper’s website account came complete with a very nice and well justified picture of Del. Marcia Price, a Peninsula Democrat and the legislation’s House sponsor. Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, carried the bill in the upper chamber.
“I have an aunt who marched against the poll tax. My grandparents both had to pay poll taxes,” Del. Price told the paper. “Just knowing that they lived under a system that was unfair and unequal, I learned very early that it was wrong, and that it needs to be changed.”
And thus it has been, causing many press outlets to contrast Virginia’s forward direction on this topic with the more backsliding stance taken by Southern states such as, say, Georgia.
It seems the Peach State has turned less than peachy on voting access, enacting a variety of measures that may effectively reduce its electorate. At a minimum, Georgia does not appear to be enthusiastic about a bountiful and robust democracy.
So Virginia should feel proud to be on the right side of heaven, insofar as electoral participation has long been regarded as a democratic ideal. The more the merrier, in other words.
That was of course not Virginia’s habit long ago. It sort of went the other direction.
In fact, when it comes to clever, innovative techniques for whittling down the size of the vote, Virginia excelled. No state seemed to bring more effective engineering to the work of making “some” prevail over “more.”
With the additional advantage of the “white primary” — a feature of the long-dominate Democratic Party — Virginia in the first half of the 20th century reduced participation sometimes to no
more than 6-7% of the eligible vote.
Think about that for a second.
And Virginia still called itself a democracy — with a wink, chuckle and a slap on the back, presumably.
There are, however, a few corrections in order. There’s a mistaken belief — you see it occasionally in published reports — that that the poll tax originated with the 1901-02 Virginia State Constitutional Convention. That body — notorious for its exclusion of Virginia’s Black vote — simply restored the tax.
Rather, you find the core idea of the poll tax — the notion that you must pay something to the state in order to vote — at Jamestown in 1623 in the form of a capitation tax of “10 pounds of tobacco.”
The measure was levied on all males over the age of 16 and went through assorted variations during the many decades that followed. After the War of 1812, for instance, free Black Virginians were required to pay $1.50.
It did get paid, for the most part. Roughly 90% of the free Black population coughed it up and, therefore, the poll tax became a reliable stream of state revenue. Still, by the 1880s, the Virginia public increasingly saw the poll tax as abusive and killed the thing in 1882.
The 1901-02 convention put it back — revenue was no longer the motive — and there it stayed until the 1940s, when opposition to the poll tax emerged once again.
But who, finally and completely, slayed the poll tax in 1966, via a lawsuit brought to the U.S. Supreme Court?
Norfolk’s own Evelyn Thomas Butts, a trailblazer and a half. She was remarkable.
It took a three-year fight legal effort to get it done and you wish some acknowledgement of her heroic labor would appear in all the self-congratulatory noise of late.
Want to know more? Read Charlene Butts Ligon’s fine 2017 book, “Fearless.”
“It ought to be required reading for every high school student in Virginia,” former Gov. Charles Robb said.
He’s right.