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How did the Twenty-fourth Amendment address barriers to voting in the United States?

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The Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964) addressed barriers to voting by prohibiting the federal and state governments from requiring the payment of a poll tax as a condition for participating in federal elections.12

Following the end of Reconstruction, many Southern states implemented poll taxes as a voter suppression tactic. Because these taxes were a prerequisite for voting, they effectively disenfranchised impoverished citizens, disproportionately impacting African Americans who had been targeted by various discriminatory laws during the Jim Crow era. By eliminating this economic barrier, the amendment sought to protect the right to vote from being denied or abridged due to a citizen's inability to pay.132

While the amendment specifically targeted federal elections, the U.S. Supreme Court later extended this prohibition to state and local elections in 1966, ruling in Harper v. Virginia Board of Electors that poll taxes violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.12