What the 24th Amendment Says
The 24th Amendment says no one can be made to pay a poll tax, or any other tax, to vote for president, vice president or Congress. That covers primaries as well as general elections. A poll tax is a flat fee charged to vote, and the amendment ended it in federal elections on January 23, 1964 (National Archives).
Key facts
- The Senate passed it 77 to 16 on March 27, 1962, and the House 295 to 86 on August 27, 1962 (GovTrack).
- 38 states ratified it in about 17 months. South Dakota was the last one needed (Constitution Annotated).
- None of the 5 states still charging a poll tax in 1964 was among the 38 (House Historian).
- It covers only federal elections. The Supreme Court ended poll taxes in state elections in 1966, in Harper v. Virginia (Cornell LII).
The whole amendment is two sentences. Section 1 reads: "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." Section 2 reads: "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
In plain words, section 1 has three parts:
- Who is protected: citizens of the United States.
- Which elections: any primary or general election for president, vice president, presidential electors, the Senate or the House.
- What is banned: denying or reducing the right to vote because a person did not pay “any poll tax or other tax.” Neither the federal government nor any state may do it.
The words “or other tax” matter. They stop a state from renaming the fee, and the Supreme Court later used the amendment to strike down a substitute Virginia tried.
Why the 24th Amendment Was Created
Southern states used the poll tax for more than 70 years to keep Black citizens, and many poor white citizens, from voting. 11 states made paying it a condition of voting between 1889 and 1908 (United States v. Texas). By 1962, five still did: Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Virginia and Texas (House Historian). Our poll tax explainer covers what the tax cost and who it kept out.
Congress had tried an ordinary law first. The House passed anti-poll-tax bills in the 1940s, and each one died in the Senate (House Historian). President John F. Kennedy then called for a constitutional amendment, which History.com describes as a way to answer Southern lawmakers’ claim that the tax was constitutional.
An amendment settled that question in advance. Senator Spessard Holland of Florida, a Southern Democrat, sponsored it (History.com). On the day the Senate passed it, senators first voted 59 to 34 to set aside a proposal by Senator Jacob Javits of New York to ban the tax by statute instead (GovTrack).
How the 24th Amendment Passed Congress
Both chambers cleared the two-thirds bar with room to spare. An amendment needs two-thirds of the members voting in each chamber. The Senate had 77 yes votes where 62 were needed, and the House had 295 where 254 were needed. The House vote came 153 days after the Senate’s.
- 77-16
- Senate, March 27, 1962 (83% yes)
- 295-86
- House, August 27, 1962 (77% yes)
- +15
- Senate votes beyond the two-thirds needed
- +41
- House votes beyond the two-thirds needed
Most of the no votes came from Democrats. In the Senate, Democrats voted 47 to 15 and Republicans 30 to 1. In the House, Democrats voted 163 to 71 and Republicans 132 to 15 (GovTrack).
Which States Ratified the 24th Amendment
38 of the 50 states ratified the 24th Amendment, starting with Illinois on November 14, 1962 and ending with South Dakota on January 23, 1964. 34 of them acted in 1963, most in a rush between February and April. The amendment was certified on February 4, 1964, with President Lyndon Johnson signing as a witness (Constitution Annotated).
The 12 states that did not ratify in time were all in the South or the West: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming. The five states that still charged the tax were all among them.
How the state voted on the amendment
- Ratified, 1962-1964 (37 states)
- South Dakota, the 38th state (January 23, 1964)
- Symbolic ratification decades later (4 states)
- Not among the 38, no later ratification in our sources (8 states)
A later ratification changed nothing in law. The amendment bound every state from January 23, 1964.
Sources: Constitution Annotated (2017 edition), note on the Twenty-fourth Amendment, for the 38 states and dates; Texas Senate Research Center analysis of H.J.R. 39 (2009) for Virginia, North Carolina and Alabama; Texas Legislature, H.J.R. 39 history, for Texas.
| State | Ratified | Symbolic ratification | Poll tax in 1964 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | Not among the 38 states | 2002 | Still charged one to vote |
| Alaska | February 11, 1963 | — | — |
| Arizona | Not among the 38 states | — | — |
| Arkansas | Not among the 38 states | — | Still charged one to vote |
| California | February 7, 1963 | — | — |
| Colorado | February 21, 1963 | — | — |
| Connecticut | March 20, 1963 | — | — |
| Delaware | May 1, 1963 | — | — |
| Florida | April 18, 1963 | — | — |
| Georgia | Not among the 38 states | — | — |
| Hawaii | March 6, 1963 | — | — |
| Idaho | March 8, 1963 | — | — |
| Illinois | November 14, 1962 | — | — |
| Indiana | February 19, 1963 | — | — |
| Iowa | April 24, 1963 | — | — |
| Kansas | March 28, 1963 | — | — |
| Kentucky | June 27, 1963 | — | — |
| Louisiana | Not among the 38 states | — | — |
| Maine | January 16, 1964 | — | — |
| Maryland | February 6, 1963 | — | — |
| Massachusetts | March 28, 1963 | — | — |
| Michigan | February 20, 1963 | — | — |
| Minnesota | February 27, 1963 | — | — |
| Mississippi | Not among the 38 states | — | Still charged one to vote |
| Missouri | May 13, 1963 | — | — |
| Montana | January 28, 1963 | — | — |
| Nebraska | April 4, 1963 | — | — |
| Nevada | March 19, 1963 | — | — |
| New Hampshire | June 16, 1963 | — | — |
| New Jersey | December 3, 1962 | — | — |
| New Mexico | March 5, 1963 | — | — |
| New York | February 4, 1963 | — | — |
| North Carolina | Not among the 38 states | 1989 | — |
| North Dakota | March 7, 1963 | — | — |
| Ohio | February 27, 1963 | — | — |
| Oklahoma | Not among the 38 states | — | — |
| Oregon | January 25, 1963 | — | — |
| Pennsylvania | March 25, 1963 | — | — |
| Rhode Island | February 14, 1963 | — | — |
| South Carolina | Not among the 38 states | — | — |
| South Dakota | January 23, 1964 | — | — |
| Tennessee | March 21, 1963 | — | — |
| Texas | Not among the 38 states | 2009 | Still charged one to vote |
| Utah | February 20, 1963 | — | — |
| Vermont | March 15, 1963 | — | — |
| Virginia | Not among the 38 states | 1977 | Still charged one to vote |
| Washington | March 14, 1963 | — | — |
| West Virginia | February 1, 1963 | — | — |
| Wisconsin | March 26, 1963 | — | — |
| Wyoming | Not among the 38 states | — | — |
Most of the 38 came in a two-month wave. The count went from 4 at the end of January 1963 to 29 by the end of March, then stayed at 36 from June 27, 1963, when Kentucky ratified, until Maine and South Dakota acted in January 1964.
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Nov 1962 | states1 |
| Dec 1962 | states2 |
| Jan 1963 | states4 |
| Feb 1963 | states16 |
| Mar 1963 | states29 |
| Apr 1963 | states32 |
| May 1963 | states34 |
| Jun 1963 | states36 |
| Jul 1963 | states36 |
| Aug 1963 | states36 |
| Sep 1963 | states36 |
| Oct 1963 | states36 |
| Nov 1963 | states36 |
| Dec 1963 | states36 |
| Jan 1964 | states38 |
Running total at the end of each month. 38 of 50 states were needed. Source: Constitution Annotated (2017 edition), ratification dates.
Four of the holdouts later ratified as a symbolic act: Virginia in 1977, North Carolina in 1989, Alabama in 2002 and Texas in 2009 (Texas Senate Research Center). The Texas resolution, filed 45 years after the amendment took effect, ratified it “as a symbolic gesture” (H.J.R. 39). We found no later ratification for Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming.
Among the amendments about who can vote, the 24th took the longest to ratify, at 17 months.
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| 15th Amendment: Voting and race | months11 |
| 19th Amendment: Women's suffrage | months14 |
| 23rd Amendment: Electoral votes for D.C. | months9 |
| 24th Amendment: Ban on poll taxes | months17 |
| 26th Amendment: Voting age of 18 | months3 |
Computed from the proposal and ratification dates in the National Archives' list of amendments 11-27. See every amendment on our constitutional amendments guide.
What the 24th Amendment Covers, and What Harper Covers
The amendment reaches only federal elections, so state and local elections needed a second step. In 1966, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections that a poll tax in state elections violates the 14th Amendment. Justice William O. Douglas wrote that a state violates the Equal Protection Clause “whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard” (Cornell LII). Between the two, no election in the country can charge a fee to vote.
How the ban on poll taxes was built, in three pieces
Source: Constitution Annotated; Harman v. Forssenius (1965); Voting Rights Act of 1965, section 10 (52 U.S.C. 10306); Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966)
Section 2, the enforcement clause, gave Congress a direct role. In section 10 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Congress found that the poll tax “precludes persons of limited means from voting,” and it directed the Attorney General to “institute forthwith” lawsuits against the tax (Cornell LII). The federal suits against Texas and Alabama that followed ended their poll taxes in state elections in early 1966.
Harman v. Forssenius, the First Test in Court
Virginia tried to keep the tax alive with a workaround, and the Supreme Court struck it down. After the amendment passed, Virginia let voters in federal elections skip the poll tax only if they filed a notarized or witnessed certificate of residence at least six months before each election.
On April 27, 1965, the Court ruled against the state with no dissent, in an opinion by Chief Justice Earl Warren. It called the certificate “plainly a cumbersome procedure” and held: “For federal elections, the poll tax is abolished absolutely as a prerequisite to voting, and no equivalent or milder substitute may be imposed” (Cornell LII).
- Senate passes it
- House passes it
- Ratified
- Harman v. Forssenius
- Voting Rights Act
- Harper v. Virginia
The 24th Amendment, from the Senate to Harper: 1962: Senate passes it (77 to 16 on March 27.). 1962: House passes it (295 to 86 on August 27.). 1964: Ratified (South Dakota is the 38th state, January 23.). 1965: Harman v. Forssenius (Virginia's certificate workaround struck down.). 1965: Voting Rights Act (Section 10 directs suits against poll taxes.). 1966: Harper v. Virginia (Poll taxes end in state elections.).
The 24th Amendment Today
No state charges a fee to vote, so today’s arguments are about costs that work like one. Challengers have argued that fees for the documents needed to get a voter ID, and court fees owed after a felony conviction, act as poll taxes. Courts have rejected both arguments so far. In 2008 the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter ID law 6 to 3. Justice John Paul Stevens’s lead opinion said the law would fail under Harper’s reasoning “if the State required voters to pay a tax or a fee” for the ID, but “the photo identification cards issued by Indiana’s BMV are also free” (Cornell LII). In 2020, the full Eleventh Circuit ruled 6 to 4 that Florida could require people with felony convictions to pay their fines and fees before voting. Chief Judge William Pryor wrote that court fees and costs “are part of the State’s punishment for a crime. They are not taxes” (Jones v. Governor of Florida).
Dissenting in the Indiana case, Justice David Souter called the law’s costs for poor voters “unjustified economic burdens uncomfortably close to the outright $1.50 fee we struck down 42 years ago” (Cornell LII). Our poll tax explainer lays out both cases and the dissents.
The 24th is one of 27 amendments. Our guide to all 27 constitutional amendments lists each one with its date and a plain summary.
Common questions
What is the 24th Amendment in simple terms?
It says no one can be made to pay a poll tax, or any other tax, to vote for president, vice president or Congress, including in primaries. It was ratified on January 23, 1964.
Why was the 24th Amendment created?
Southern states used poll taxes for decades to keep Black citizens and poor white citizens from voting. Bills to ban the tax passed the House in the 1940s but died in the Senate. In 1962 Congress sent the states a constitutional amendment instead, sponsored by Senator Spessard Holland of Florida.
When was the 24th Amendment ratified?
South Dakota became the 38th state to approve it on January 23, 1964, which completed ratification. It was certified on February 4, 1964.
Does the 24th Amendment apply to state elections?
No. Its text covers only elections for federal offices. The Supreme Court ended poll taxes in state and local elections in 1966, in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, under the 14th Amendment.
Did Texas ratify the 24th Amendment?
Not in time. Texas was one of the five states still charging a poll tax in 1964, and it was not among the 38 states that ratified. The Texas Legislature passed a symbolic ratification in 2009.
Is a voter ID fee a poll tax under the 24th Amendment?
Courts have said no so far. The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s ID law 6 to 3 in 2008, and the lead opinion noted that the state’s ID cards are free. In 2020 the full Eleventh Circuit held 6 to 4 that court fees and costs owed after a felony conviction are part of the punishment, not taxes.
What You Can Do
- Check what your state asks for at the polls, and get it before the deadline. If your state requires an ID, ask for the free voting ID by name. The voter registration explainer links every state’s rules.
- If you have a felony conviction, find out whether you can vote now. The Campaign Legal Center’s Restore Your Vote tool walks through each state’s rules.
- Help someone get the documents they need. VoteRiders helps voters get an ID free of charge.
- Ask your state legislators about court debt and voting. Ask whether your state requires full payment of fines and fees before a person with a conviction can vote. Our letter-writing guide shows how to write a message an office will read.