Amendment XXIV (the Twenty-fourth Amendment ) of the IUnited States Constitutionprohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 29, 1962 and was ratified by the states on January 24, 1964 .
Poll taxes had been enacted in eleven Southern states after reconstruction as a measure to prevent poor people from voting, and had been held to be unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. However, it wasn't until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Harper v. Virginia Board of Education (1966) that all state poll taxes (for both state and federal elections) were officially declared unconstitutional, because they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
