Why Mama Didn't Vote

Voter Suppression--A Personal History

When I was a child in the 1950’s, I asked my mother why she didn’t vote.

 She took a deep breath and looked away from me in embarrassment. “I vote through my husband.”

 “But you told me you and Daddy don’t always discuss all the candidates and even when you do, you don’t always agree with him.”

 She shamed me. “If I spend the money to pay poll tax, I won’t have the money for your school lunch.”

 I grew up in a home where my father periodically pulled his poll tax receipt from his pocketbook and showed it to us with pride. We admired the folded and worn slip of paper with wide-eyed awe. It was a home where my mother decided she would relinquish her right to drop a ballot into a box so my siblings and I could have the right to sit at the school cafeteria tables. I grew up in a nation where access to the ballot was limited by encumbrances. Democracy was the government for the elite and by the elite.

 When the poll tax was revoked in 1964, my mother made it her practice to vote. Some years before then, she could have afforded to pay poll tax, but it was against her principles.

In my early adult years, there were times when I thought I was too busy to go vote, and I feel guilty that I let the day pass without taking the time. I remember a day when I was a high school teacher, who had to stay after school because of duties. I didn't vote for President.  Later, working twelve-hour shifts as an RN in a hospital, I failed to vote. As a critical care nurse,  I often did not take my full lunch break of thirty minutes. The polling place was across town.  Back then we lacked innovative methods to allow voting, a special privilege and obligation—the barrier we build around the fort of democracy. 

Even though women gained the right to vote one hundred years ago, they often lacked the means to exercise their sacred right. Poll tax locked many women out of the voting places.

 Poll tax, literacy tests, and social intimidation kept men and women of color from voting in Mississippi. In this year’s election, inconveniences and inefficiencies are the tools utilized to inhibit some people from voting. Early voting has started. In our cities, voters are standing in line four hours or more to vote.

 Now in 2020, it’s time to remind people what poll tax is. A poll tax is a fee of a predetermined amount that must be paid in order for a person to vote. When we think of poll tax, we suppose it was a practice of the South, but some northern and western states--California, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin--charged poll tax. 

Please see this Wikipedia article for more information about poll tax. 

Whoever intimidates, threatens, coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce, any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote...18 U.S. Code § 594.Intimidation of voters