Cutting the Mustard

In its laborious trip through the Senate Judiciary Committee in recent weeks, the Administration's voting-rights bill underwent considerable broadening. One amendment extended automatic coverage in voter protection to "pockets of discrimination" in the South where less than 25% of the voting-age populace of any race is registered. Another empowered courts to install federal registrars anywhere in the nation where U.S. attorneys prove that voter discrimination exists. But the bill contained a potential loophole: the possibility that Southern states might try to discourage Negroes from voting by imposing exorbitant poll taxes.

Teddy v. Temptation. Under the 24th, and latest, amendment to the U.S. Constitution, poll taxes are prohibited in elections for federal offices. However, poll taxes in state and local elections are still permitted, and four states --Alabama, Texas, Virginia and Mississippi--now have such poll taxes. Mississippi's poll tax is $2 a year, the others levy $1.50. What would prevent a state from rushing through a measure establishing a poll tax of, say, $15? To forestall that temptation, Massachusetts' Democratic Senator Teddy Kennedy tacked onto the voting bill yet another amendment, outlawing poll taxes altogether in elections for state and local offices. The amendment drew the ardent support of a bipartisan group of Northern liberals led by the bill's floor leader, Michigan's Democratic Senator Philip Hart. But when the bill was ready for the Senate floor, the anti-poll-tax proposal ran into the opposition of the very men most instrumental in drawing up the original voting bill--Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, Democratic Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. They argued that since poll taxes in federal elections had been abolished by constitutional amendment, abolishing them in state elections by statute might be ruled unconstitutional.

Test Case. For three weeks, the bill crawled along in the Senate while the leaders and the Northern liberals waged an embarrassing battle over the issue. The spectacle was hugely enjoyed by Southerners, themselves too weak and divided to mount their own filibuster. Last week Dirksen, Mansfield and Katzenbach provided what they hoped would be an acceptable compromise. The anti-poll-tax amendment would be dropped. But a substitute clause would direct the Attorney General to file "forthwith" in Federal court a test case designed to outlaw any poll tax whose purpose or effect is to deny the right to vote in state or local elections. If the case is won and the decision upheld by the Supreme Court, that will be it. "We are of the opinion," crooned Ev Dirksen in his best basso profundo, "that this will cut the mustard."

Liberals pronounced the substitute almost acceptable to them. To encourage their acceptance, Majority Leader Mansfield served notice that starting this week, he will order the Senate into daily seven-hour sessions until the voting bill is passed.

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