Hearings

POLL TAX

MONDAY, MARCH 22, 1948

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON RULES AND ADMINISTRATION,

Washington, D. C.

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a. m., in room 104B, Senate Office Building, Senator C. Wayland Brooks (chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Brooks (chairman) and Stennis.

The CHAIRMAN. I think we had better call the committee to order. For the sake of the record, we will include H. R. 29, which is the subject under consideration here.

(H. R. 29 is as follows:)

[H. R. 29, 80th Cong., 1st sess.]

AN ACT Making unlawful the requirement for the payment of a poll tax as a prerequisite to voting in a primary or other election for national officers.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the requirement that a poll tax be paid as a prerequisite to voting or registering to vote at primaries or other elections for President, Vice President, electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Member of the House of Representatives, is not and shall not be deemed a qualification of voters or electors voting or registering to vote at primaries or other elections for said officers, within the meaning of the Constitution, but is and shall be deemed an interference with the manner of holding primaries and other elections for said national officers and a tax upon the right or privilege of voting for said national officers.

SEC. 2. It shall be unlawful for any State, municipality, or other government or governmental subdivision to prevent any person from voting or registering to vote in any primary or other election for President, Vice President, electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Member of the House of Representatives, on the ground that such person has not paid a poll tax, and any such requirement shall be invalid and void insofar as it purports to disqualify any person otherwise qualified to vote in such primary or other election. No State, municipality, or other government or governmental subdivision shall levy a poll tax or any other tax on the right or privilege of voting in such primary or other election, and any such tax shall be invalid and void insofar as it purports to disqualify any person otherwise qualified from voting at such primary or other election.

SEC. 3. It shall be unlawful for any State, municipality, or other governmental subdivision to interfere with the manner of selecting persons for national office by requiring the payment of a poll tax as a prerequisite for voting or registering to vote in any primary or other election for President, Vice President, electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Member of the House of Repesentatives, and any such requirement shall be invalid and void.

SEC. 4. It shall be unlawful for any person, whether or not acting under the cover of authority of the laws of any State or subdivision thereof, to require the payment of a poll tax as a prerequisite for voting or registering to vote in any primary or other election for President, Vice President, electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Member of the House of Representatives. Passed the House of Representatives July 21, 1947. Attest:

JOHN ANDREWS, Clerk.

The CHAIRMAN. In the way of history, this is the bill that was passed by the House. It was received by the Senate and referred to this committee. It was referred to a subcommittee and was voted out unanimously favorably by the subcommittee.

Subsequent to that time, Senator Stennis, who is a member of this committee, submitted on behalf of 21 Senators and 7 governors, or their attorneys general, a request for hearing.

This matter was submitted to the whole committee, and on March 10 they ordered hearings held on this subject. It was agreed at that time that there should be no more than 2 days' hearing on either side. Because the request was made upon behalf of the opposition and in light of the fact that the bill had been unanimously reported by the subcommittee, we have asked Senator Stennis to present his witnesses in opposition.

The first witness, I understand, is the Honorable A. A. Carmichael, attorney general of Alabama.

Mr. Carmichael, will you proceed now and give your testimony?

STATEMENT OF A. A. CARMICHAEL, ATTORNEY GENERAL
STATE OF ALABAMA

Mr. CARMICHAEL. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee I have prepared a short statement which speaks for itself. My understanding of the procedure is that if any questions are desired on the statement, it is not incumbent upon the witness to make any further statement. Is that correct, sir?

The CHAIRMAN. If you would like to read your statement for the record, we will be glad to have it, and that may provoke questions. Mr. CARMICHAEL. I will be glad to, sir.

I shall make no attempt at profundity in this statement. I do not profess to be a profound constitutional lawyer. In my reference to the Constitution I shall speak as an everyday practicing attorney who is not the author of any textbooks on the Constitution of the United States, but who, nevertheless, has some definite ideas about what the pertinent provisions of the Constitution mean. Whether I shall be able to bring to this committee any new or fresh points of view is doufbtful. It appears that the subject has been thoroughly exhausted and any attempt to avoid repetition will probably be fruitless.

I wish to state at the outset that I shall not discuss the merits or demerits of a poll tax as such. Suffice it to say that a goodly number of the States have seen fit to dispense with the poll tax as a qualification for voting. The payment of a small amount, $1.50, is one of the qualifications for voting in the State of Alabama, and irrespective of the merits or demerits of such a law, when and if this poll tax is removed, it should be done in the manner provided by law.

In my judgment, the only way this qualification for voting can be removed is by the legislatures of the States. I would say to the proponents of the anti-poll-tax bill that there is a perfectly constitutional way in which to remove the poll tax as a qualification for voting: An amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

The Federal Constitution provides that the powers not delegated to the United States nor prohibited by it to the States are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.

It is certain that this matter was gone into most carefully by the framers of our Constitution in the Convention of 1787, and at that Convention some of the members desired a uniform qualification for voters prescribed in the Constitution, some wanted to place in the Congress the power to prescribe qualifications, and still another group wanted the qualifications for voters prescribed by the several States for their own people.

These three suggested plans were debated thoroughly, much more thoroughly perhaps than the records show, and finally the Convention decided that it was best to provide a plan under which such qualifications for voting prescribed by each State would be accepted and this plan was placed in the Constitution in its present form, section 2 of article I, which provides that the qualifications of those voting for Members of the National House of Representatives should be the same as those prescribed by the States for those voting for the members of the houses of representatives of the several States.

Later on, the Constitution was amended, providing for the election of United States Senators by direct vote of the people and this same qualification-of-voters clause was used. There has been much said about whether this provision was a power reserved to the States or whether it was a power granted to the Federal Government.

Perhaps the sensible view is that it was neither. The Government was being was formed and it was merely a part of the formation of the Government. The States knew what they wanted, they knew what they already had and it may be said that they were a bit uneasy about this entire matter-this new Government being formed. The States therefore had functioned in the matter of qualifications of voters about as they pleased. With certain limitations, they decided to continue to function, as regards qualifications of voters, as they pleased. The States agreed to restrict themselves to the extent that they provided that they would not be allowed to provide qualifications for those voting for Congressmen different from those provided for those voting for their houses of representatives-or the most numerous branch of their State legislatures. So, we see that the matter was threshed out pretty carefully and a solution reached. The Convention simply decided that the matter of the qualification of those who voted for Congressmen and those who voted for membership in the State houses of representatives must be the same.

It is my view that the Congress does not have the power to enact the proposed legislation. It is worthy of mention that those who insist that the Congress does have such power declare that the polltax requirement is not a qualification for voting. They say the polltax requirement is interference with the manner of conducting such elections.

It seems to me that the proponents thus admit that the Congress has no power to enact legislation governing qualifications of voters. The Constitution does provide that the time, place, and manner of electing Senators and Representatives, provided by the States, may be altered by the Congress.

But, it appears perfectly clear that "times," "places," and "manner" have nothing to do with qualifications. Power was given the Congress in the matters of times, places, and manner but no such power over voting qualifications was given. The makers or framers of our

Constitution accepted voting qualifications which were in force in the several States and did not give the Congress any power to change or alter them. The Congress should not attempt to say that a qualification for voters is not a qualification.

A good many thoughtful people all over the land believe that the poll tax as a qualification for voting is outmoded and should be discarded, but as distasteful as it may be to some people, an attempt by the Congress to abolish such a tax, even in the election of Federal officials, would, in my humble judgment be clearly in violation of the Federal Constitution and far beyond the powers of the Congress.

If this reform is needed, and a good many people believe it is, it should be done regularly, by constitutional amendment. It must be admitted that if the Congress has power to abolish the poll tax it also has the power to impose additional qualifications or to make these qualifications more narrow.

It cannot be denied that when the Constitution was adopted, all the Original States had property or tax qualifications. It is clear that those who framed the Constitution thought the tax and property qualifications obtaining in the States were perfectly constitutional. Has the element of time made such voting qualifications unconstitutional?

The answer seems to be that times have changed, but the answer to that is that while times have changed the Constitution of the United States has not changed in this regard. It is just as it was when adopted. The Constitution, of course, may be changed, but it remains the same until changed.

The people of the country decided that it was time to change the method of electing United States Senators and they changed the Constitution. If our Constitution as regards qualifications for voting needs modernizing, let's do it. But let's don't attempt to do by an act of the Congress what should be done by constitutional amendment. We have changed the Constitution in the past and we can change it again. We have decided in this country that the sex qualification for voting has no place in a modern system of government and we changed the Constitution. All the States had sex qualifications when the Constitution was adopted. The Congress did not attempt to change this sex qualification by an act of the Congress.

Congress, in amending the Constitution, allowing women to vote, recognized, of course, that the Constitution gives to the States the power to fix qualifications for voters and that the only legal way to give the women the right to vote was to change the Constitution. The Congress recognized, in proposing the Fifteenth amendment, that the right to prescribe qualifications for voting is in the Stateshence the Constitution was changed in order that no person would be denied the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

The States, before these amendments could legally have prescribed racial and sex qualifications for voting. The States may legally fix poll-tax qualifications until another change is made in the Constitution. As has been well said, the only way to modernize the Constitution is to change it by amendment.

It is important that we heed the words of those Members of the United States Senate who drafted the Fourteenth amendment. It

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