Poll taxes and voter ID

The Wall Street Journal today editorializes against the "liberal assault on voter ID laws." I tend to sympathize with their argument, with a few minor caveats.

Voter identification is an essential element in preserving the integrity of our elections. That said, election laws must be crafted in such a way as not to run afoul of the 24th Amendment, which states:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senators or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

Some people have gone so far as to say that any requirement to present ID in order to vote is a "poll tax," and therefore unconstitutional. That's simply not the case, but to see why, it helps to understand just exactly what a poll tax is and what it isn't, something that even the Wall Street Journal fails to do. In its editorial, it says:

Showing ID is an incidental cost of voting, like having to buy a postage stamp for an absentee ballot, or feed the parking meter when you go to the polling booth. Poll taxes, by contrast, required a person to pay a fee every time he voted and were adopted for racially discriminatory purposes.

That last sentence feeds two popular misconceptions: 1) that the definition of a poll tax is a tax on the act of voting, and 2) that a poll tax is inherently racist and/or discriminatory. Neither of those things is true.

Addressing misconception #1: Prior to the adoption of the 24th Amendment, the payment of poll taxes was indeed used by many states as one condition among many for voting, but that does not mean that it is correct to define them as taxes on voting. As to misconception #2: The fact that poll taxes have been used in the past to deny minorities the right to vote does not make them inherently racist.

So, what is a poll tax? A poll tax is also known as a capitation - a "head tax." It is simply a uniform tax levied on individual citizens or residents. For example, if the state of Alabama were to require every adult citizen over the age of 21 to pay $10 to the state each year, that would be a poll tax. Poll taxes need not have any relationship whatsoever to voting, nor to race or any other immutable characteristic. In that regard, they are very similar to property taxes or income taxes. The 24th Amendment forbids states and the federal government from requiring the payment of any tax in order to vote - whether that tax is a poll tax, a property tax, an income tax, or a sales tax.

The key question with respect to the constitutionality of voter ID legislation is: "what constitutes a tax?" If would-be voters have to pay a fee in order to obtain an acceptable form of identification, is that a tax? If the answer is yes, then it is a clear violation of the 24th Amendment. If the answer is no, then it isn't.

In my opinion, the payment of a fee - no matter how small - is unacceptable under the constitution as a requirement for voting. If someone has to pay for an acceptable form of ID to prove their eligibility to vote, then we shouldn't mislabel that as a "poll tax," but it may very well qualify as one of the "other taxes" that are prohibited by the 24th Amendment.

The simple way around this is to provide state-issued voter ID cards for free; if memory serves me correctly, some states are doing that already. I'll bet that plenty of others will be following their lead soon.