poll tax

September 17, 2021 - Though a lawsuit seeking to restore the voting rights of North Carolinians on probation or parole suffered setbacks in recent court rulings, the broader movement to re-enfranchise people with felony convictions has made gains in Southern states in recent years.

September 24, 2020 - The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld a Florida law requiring people with felony convictions to pay off all court fines and fees before they can cast ballots again, so voting rights advocates are redoubling efforts to raise funds to help the indigent.

September 9, 2020 - As states across the country gear up for the November elections, millions of formerly incarcerated people could be blocked from voting because of laws requiring them to first pay all court fines and fees. But voting rights advocates are challenging those laws — and they recently racked up a big win in North Carolina.

July 28, 2020 - A federal appeals court is allowing Florida to enforce a law that requires payment of court fines and fees before people with felony convictions can vote again. The court is still deciding if it's an illegal poll tax, and Democratic senators say two of the judges are violating ethics rules by remaining on the case.

January 29, 2020 - The voter registration deadline for Florida's 2020 primary election is approaching. A federal judge ruled that the state cannot require people with felony convictions to pay court fines, if they cannot afford it, to have their voting rights restored. An appeals court is reviewing that decision.

May 24, 2019 - As the movement for criminal justice reform takes center stage ahead of the 2020 elections, governors and legislators in the South are offering reforms to create a more welcoming reentry process after prison and to restore rights stripped from ex-felons — though progress on that front faces backlash in Florida.

June 29, 2018 - Dealing a blow to the labor movement that will disproportionately affect people of color, the conservative majority's ruling that public-sector workers represented by unions should be able to pay nothing for that representation endorses a policy first promoted in the 1940s South by pro-segregation business interests hostile to organized labor because of its work on behalf of racial justice.

September 8, 2016 - While Virginia's Democratic governor battles Republican lawmakers over restoring voting rights for ex-felons who've completed their sentences, almost 200,000 of the state's residents — almost half of them African-American — remain disenfranchised, mostly for nonviolent crimes.

March 26, 2013 - A provision of the North Carolina constitution designed to suppress the black vote is no longer enforceable under the Voting Rights Act, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to give voters a second chance to remove it.

October 11, 2012 - Civil rights leader Judith Browne Dianis of The Advancement Project makes the case for a new constitutional amendment protecting the right to vote, which most of the world's democracies already have.