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Amendment XXIV (the Twenty-fourth Amendment) of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other type of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 25, 1962 and was ratified by the states on January 23, 1964.
Poll taxes had been enacted in eleven Southern states after Reconstruction as a measure to prevent poor black and white people from voting, and had been held to be unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. At the time of this amendment's passage, only five states still retained a poll tax: Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi.
The full text of this amendment follows:
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