William O. Douglas

“ Those principles apply here. For to repeat, wealth or fee paying has, in our view, no relation to voting qualifications; the right to vote is too precious, too fundamental to be so burdened or conditioned. ”

“ Enforcement of poll taxes takes the form of disenfranchisement of those who do not pay, § 22 of the Virginia Constitution providing that collection of delinquent poll taxes for a particular year may not be enforced by legal proceedings until the tax for that year has become three years delinquent. ”

“ Especially since the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights, any alleged infringement of the right of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized.' There we were considering charges that voters in one part of the State had greater representation per person in the State Legislature than voters in another part of the State. ”

“ We say the same whether the citizen, otherwise qualified to vote, has $1.50 in his pocket or nothing at all, pays the fee or fails to pay it. The principle that denies the State the right to dilute a citizen's vote on account of his economic status or other such factors by analogy bars a system which excludes those unable to pay a fee to vote or who fail to pay. ”

“ Seven of the eight Justices then sitting subscribed to the Court's opinion, thus joining in expressions of what constituted unequal and discriminatory treatment that sound strange to a contemporary ear. ”

“ Yet the poll tax as enforced in Texas is a tax on the equally important right to vote.' United States v. Texas, D.C., 252 F.Supp. 234, 254 (decided February 9, 1966) .
3 We recently held in Louisiana v. United States, 380 U.S. 145, 85 S.Ct. 817, 13 L.Ed.2d 709, that a literacy test which gave voting registrars 'a virtually uncontrolled discretion as to who should vote and who should not' (id., at 150, 85 S.Ct. at 820) had been used to deter Negroes from voting and accordingly we struck it down. ”