How to Use poll tax in a Sentence

poll tax

noun
  • There was, there was a poll tax in southern states.
    — CBS News, 3 May 2026
  • There was – there was a poll tax in Southern states.
    — CBS News, 4 May 2026
  • The poll tax was used for decades to keep poor people, white and Black, from voting.
    — Mike Cason | [email protected], al, 31 July 2022
  • If Jim Crow politicians had gotten their way, the poll tax would still be in place.
    — David Litt, Time, 18 June 2020
  • There are a lot of felons in Florida who could use the money to pay that state's new poll tax.
    — Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter, 16 Oct. 2019
  • This was still the Virginia of the poll tax and of segregated schools.
    — Drew Gilpin Faust, The Atlantic, 18 July 2019
  • But Texas is not, say, a voter who has wrongly been subjected to a poll tax.
    — Amy Davidson Sorkin, The New Yorker, 12 Dec. 2020
  • Or pass a voter ID law that one federal judge compared to a poll tax.
    — Cristian Farias, Daily Intelligencer, 25 June 2018
  • There might as well have been a poll tax or jelly-bean test for Black voters in Pleasant Grove.
    — Roy S. Johnson | [email protected], al, 27 Aug. 2020
  • In the morning the negro who started the riot appeared at the polls and was refused a vote because of non-payment of poll tax.
    — Roger Simmons, orlandosentinel.com, 29 Oct. 2020
  • Opponents equate the law to to a modern-day poll tax, requiring a segment of the population to pay for the right to vote.
    — Karina Elwood, sun-sentinel.com, 14 Aug. 2020
  • That process echoes mechanisms like poll taxes that were used to racially curate voter rolls in the Deep South.
    — Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker, 3 July 2019
  • In the aftermath of Reconstruction, southern states used poll taxes to deny poor black and white men the vote.
    — Time Staff, Time, 26 Sep. 2017
  • Texas, a Southern state at the epicenter of slavery and segregation, still remained one of the last five states to require a poll tax.
    — Shelby Stewart, Houston Chronicle, 18 Aug. 2020
  • The amendment’s backers sued, arguing that the new law amounted to a poll tax, which is unconstitutional.
    — The Economist, 24 Oct. 2019
  • Several states instituted a grandfather clause as a loophole for white men who could not afford the poll tax or pass a literacy test.
    — Javonte Anderson, USA TODAY, 5 Mar. 2021
  • The nominal reason for the Peasant Revolt was the announcement of a third poll tax in 15 years.
    — Susan Wade, The Conversation, 5 June 2020
  • Meanwhile, a federal judge denied requests for injunctions to expand mail voting, and said that requiring postage for mail ballots is not a poll tax.
    — Rachel Glickhouse, ProPublica, 26 June 2020
  • Last year, the Florida legislature said paying fines and fees was part of serving a sentence, critics say the measure is a de facto poll tax.
    — Ellen McGirt, Fortune, 10 Apr. 2020
  • But critics say the laws are just modern incarnations of poll taxes, designed to suppress the African American vote.
    — Joseph Williams, The New Republic, 24 Oct. 2019
  • The law, Chief Judge William Pryor wrote in the majority opinion, doesn't constitute a poll tax.
    — Christina Maxouris, CNN, 15 Oct. 2020
  • In the April election, anyone who was sending a ballot back through the mail had to include a first-class stamp, which led to some criticism that the city effectively had a poll tax.
    — Devin Kelly, Anchorage Daily News, 28 Apr. 2018
  • The Warren Court and the civil-rights movement swept away poll taxes and literacy tests in the 1960s.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 19 July 2019
  • But now the House has passed a ruthless attack on democracy, a poll tax in disguise, an attack on college students, the elderly, minorities, and the poor.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 7 Dec. 2021
  • Starting around 1900, states found workarounds to the law, enacting poll tax laws and literacy tests as means of restricting the Black vote.
    — Rick Jervis, USA TODAY, 3 Feb. 2020
  • Some states said passage of the 19th Amendment came too late in the year for women to register for the November election or pay a special fee called a poll tax.
    — Marylou Tousignant, Washington Post, 17 Aug. 2020
  • In 1964, the poll tax was abolished by Constitutional amendment, and Texas’s Plan B kicked in.
    — David Litt, Time, 18 June 2020
  • Instead of celebrating this racial progress, Democrats play the race card by claiming the GOP wants to restore poll taxes and literacy tests.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 7 Jan. 2019
  • The freedmen may have gained the right to vote (one that would be proscribed in the years to come in the South by post-Reconstruction laws establishing poll taxes, literacy tests and other measures).
    — The Root, 29 Sep. 2017
  • The 24th Amendment, which outlawed the poll tax as a voting requirement in federal elections, had recently been added to the Constitution.
    — Emmett Lindner, New York Times, 25 Dec. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'poll tax.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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