poll tax
nounDefinition of poll tax
: a tax of a fixed amount per person levied on adults and often linked to the right to vote
Examples of poll tax in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
For instance, when New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen asked presidential candidates to sign a petition calling on New Hampshire to repeal a student poll tax, 16 candidates did so. — Adam Eichen, The New Republic, "After 48 Years, Democrats Still Haven’t Gotten the Memo," 23 July 2019 This was still the Virginia of the poll tax and of segregated schools. — Drew Gilpin Faust, The Atlantic, "Race, History, and Memories of a Virginia Girlhood," 18 July 2019 The right to register to vote without literacy tests, poll taxes and other barriers were key goals of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. — Lee Roop | Lroop@al.com, al.com, "Alabama’s six constitutions make historic trip to free in-state showing," 26 June 2019 That process echoes mechanisms like poll taxes that were used to racially curate voter rolls in the Deep South. — Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker, "The Supreme Court Just Legitimized a Cornerstone Element of Voter Suppression," 3 July 2019 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, "Majority Preservation Act," 7 Jan. 2019 Suppression tactics included gerrymandering districts, shutting down polling locations, purging voters from the rolls, and creating poll taxes in the form of voter ID laws. — Bree Newsome, SELF, "The 2018 Midterm Elections Proved That Change Must Happen from the Ground Up," 15 Nov. 2018 The same attitudes that rationalized blackface rationalized poll taxes, lynchings, and segregation — issues that have shaped black life in America to this day. — P.r. Lockhart, Vox, "Megyn Kelly’s initial defense of blackface ignored the practice’s deeply racist history," 24 Oct. 2018 In 1846, during his time at Walden Pond, Thoreau spent the night in jail for refusing to pay his poll tax, in opposition to slavery and the Mexican-American War. — Kelly Scott Franklin, WSJ, "‘The Road to Walden’ Review: Peripatetic Ponderings," 12 July 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'poll tax.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Keep scrolling for more
Keep scrolling for more