Election 2008: Money vs. Time
Believe it or not, you’d only have to go back about 40 years in U.S. history to learn about something called a poll tax. Yes, you guessed it: Less than a half-century ago, people actually had to pay money to exercise their constitutional right to vote. These required payments, known simply as “poll taxes,” were enacted in eleven U.S. states shortly after the Reconstruction (a twelve-year period after the Civil War, when the South was restored to the Union), and were designed in large part to suppress the vote in minority communities.
It wasn’t until 1962, actually, that the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution called for an end to these poll taxes; and not until January 1964 that the amendment was ratified. (Further, and for the sake of historical accuracy, all poll taxes weren’t officially declared unconstitutional until 1966 when law makers determined that any such tax violated the 14th Amendment — which basically says that no individual state can deny any citizen rights that everyone else enjoys.)
So what about us? You know, the modern-day “you and me”? Do you think we still have a poll tax? Maybe not in dollars in cents, but certainly in what has become an equally precious commodity. You got it; it’s time.
So how long did you wait at the polls on Election Day to cast your vote? An hour? Three hours? Do I hear six hours? Despite a record-setting voter turnout for the 2008 presidential election, many of us paid a different type of tax, one that was measured in hours spent away from our families, our additional responsibilities, and — monetarily speaking — our jobs.
So give yourself a pat on the back for helping produce the highest voter turnout in 100 years. Sure, a lot of the numbers are still being tallied, between absentee votes and the like. But early indications suggest that the percentage of eligible voters who actually made it to the polls hasn’t been this high since Howard Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan. And that was in 1908!
So this election year, the American people voted for change. And they spoke loudly.
Now maybe the powers-that-be can start working on how to speed up the voting process; either that or declare Election Day a working holiday. We’ll have to wait four years to find out.
