The Poor Are Being Barred From Voting...

Or are they....?

Today I spotted an interesting blog post from Robert Reich, who "served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century." Said blog post has also been picked up by Newsweek and posted on Yahoo.

THIS blog post, entitled variously "The New Poll Tax" (blog) and "The Poor Are Being Barred From Voting. And That’s Unconstitutional..." is in serious need of Fisking.

So, let's see here. Reich states that there are several ways that the poor are being disenfranchised. Each one deserves a closer look. But before I do so, a couple comments.

I would say initially that Reich compares various laws to the poll tax, outlawed by the 24th Amendment. That Amendment 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 Senator 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.

In what follows, Reich is not really arguing that there is any actual tax imposed, as far as I can see. However, the Supreme Court stated in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections:

It is argued that a State may exact fees from citizens for many different kinds of licenses; that if it can demand from all an equal fee for a driver's license, it can demand from all an equal poll tax for voting. But we must remember that the interest of the State, when it comes to voting, is limited to the power to fix qualifications. Wealth, like race, creed, or color, is not germane to one's ability to participate intelligently in the electoral process.  Lines drawn on the basis of wealth or property, like those of race  are traditionally disfavored. To introduce wealth or payment of a fee as a measure of a voter's qualifications is to introduce a capricious or irrelevant factor.  The degree of the discrimination is irrelevant.  In this context -- that is, as a condition of obtaining a ballot -- the requirement of fee paying causes an "invidious" discrimination that runs afoul of the Equal Protection Clause.  Levy "by the poll..." is an old familiar form of taxation; and we say nothing to impair its validity so long as it is not made a condition to the exercise of the franchise. Harper v. Va. State Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 668-69, 86 S. Ct. 1079, 1082 (1966)

Other cases interpreting the 24th Amendment have held:

It is unconstitutional to force a citizen to "either pay a poll tax or file a certificate of residence six months prior to the election." Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528, 543, 85 S. Ct. 1177, 1186 (1965).

Outside of the 24th Amendment, the Supreme Court has also held that governments may not force people to waive constitutional rights in exchange for benefits.

With that said, there is also language in the 14th Amendment that states that the right to vote may not  be in "any way abridged" except for a voter who participates in "rebellion, or other crime." The Supreme Court interpreted this in the case of Richardson v. Ramirez to hold that this did not prevent a state from denying a convicted felon the right to vote, even if the felon had otherwise finished their sentence. 

So, while there may be no actual tax to be paid at the poll, what I suspect that Reich is doing here is arguing that these laws become a defacto way of introducing unconstitutional "wealth or property" tests for voting, and perhaps, since felons are often required to pay fines or fees as a condition of completing their punishment, they cannot vote for long periods in some states even if the right to vote is restored to felons who have otherwise finished their punishment.

In his post, Reich first argues:

In nine states, Republican legislators have enacted laws that disenfranchise anyone with outstanding legal fees or court fines. For example, in Alabama more than 100,000 people who owe money – roughly 3 percent of the state’s voting-age population – have been struck from voting rolls. 

Reich says that Alabama is one example, and that there are 8 other states that do so. He does not give an example of the laws in question, nor name the other states in which this occurs. But where are the laws that do this? I have not located any information which indicates that there are 9 states who condition voting on the payment of fines and fees outside of payment of fines and court fees for felonies committed. In these states, restoration of voting rights is specifically conditioned on repayment of fines and fees.

And, in fact, the Washington Post featured an article on November 8, 2016 entitled "These people have been barred from voting today because they’re in debt." In that article, the authors feature an interview with a woman from Alabama who cannot vote, and who says:

Forty-eight-year-old Treva Thompson won’t be voting on Election Day. It’s not that she’s turned off by the choice of candidates. It’s that she can’t. She owes around $8,000 in fines and fees, plus more than $30,000 in victim restitution related to her felony theft conviction in 2005. And she’d have to pay it all off before starting the process to have her voting rights restored. A herculean task, she explains, because she often doesn’t “even have money to get gas to go look for a job.” Speaking for individuals with criminal histories and debt, Thompson says: “We shouldn’t lose our rights as if we’re nothing.”

So, as I suspected, this is less of an issue with a poll tax and more of an issue of whether felons with debts and restitution payments can be denied the right to vote for failure to complete a felony. It's not necessary to go to "poll tax," which is very different and unconstitutional from denying felons the right to vote, which IS constitutional. There is an in-depth study here, which discusses the issue more in-depth.

However, I am still not quite sure to which laws Reich is referring. For instance, he says that:

Preventing people from voting because they owe legal fees or court fines muzzle low-income Americans at a time in our nation’s history when the rich have more political power than ever.

But also says: "These state laws are another form of voter suppression – like...bars on anyone with felony convictions from voting." This is curious, because I haven't been able to find information on fines or fees unrelated to criminal actions causing inability to vote. I would be interested in more information from Reich as to what laws he's referring to...