Quote:
Originally Posted by freebeard
If they consider the job more important than voting, they probably wouldn't make good choices if they did?
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You are describing a poll tax. We used to be more direct about it - just charging a fee to cast a vote to discourage the poor from voting. Then a constitutional amendment banned the practice.
Today the preferred method is to make voting hours inconvenient and lines long for those you don't want to vote. The thing is the people making these changes are very open about the goal - they directly argued the fact in Supreme Court cases.
Eliminating Sunday voting in Georgia is one example. Black churches organized "Souls to the Polls" where they would take people to vote after Sunday church service. Participation went up but these new voters did not vote for the desired party, so the party that controlled the election process and didn't get more votes on Sunday eliminated Sunday voting.
In Georgia voting precincts that are 90% or more minority have voting wait times 8 times longer than Tuesday that those that are 90% or more white.