(Ed.'s Note: We got this quaint graphic from Puck Magazine published on November 11, 1881 on exhibit at the American Museum of Modern History. Associate Judge Louis Sorola was kind enough to send us these old political satire cartoons and poll tax notices from a bygone era.
If you click to enlarge the cartoon you will see that the free ballot that destroys political bosses is founded on a pillar of public common sense. Or so it was meant to be. That's before the huge corporations were able to buy entire legislatures through "soft" money contributions to undermine the popular will.
(In past years, the requirement for paying a tax to vote was a way for the dominant groups to stay entrenched in power because poor people and minorities could not afford to vote. In South Texas - like in Duval County and others - the Parr brothers and their counterparts would often round up the poor and pay their poll tax so they could vote in their candidates.
We often take the freedom to vote for granted with as little as 8 percent of the vote deciding the outcome in some county races. If we charged people to vote, that percentage would probably go to to nearly 1 percent. How times have changed and yet remain the same.)
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