Atlanta Daily World

WASHINGTON, D.C.-(NNPA) The House Administration subcommittee on elections was told last Monday how Virginians had four times unsuccessfully tried to get rid of the poll tax through Federal court action.

Moss A Plunkett, of Roanoke, Virginia, appearing in behalf of Americans for Democratic Action in support of legislation to outlaw the poll tax as a requirement for voting in Federal elections, said the suit was instituted by Dorothy Bentley Jones, who became 21 years of age on May 8, 1944.

Under Virginia law, Mr Plunkett said, no poll tax could be assessed against her for the year 1943 because she had not reached her maturity and no poll tax could be assessed against her for the year 1944 because on January 1, 1944 she was still under 21 years of age.

Mr. Plunkett said Miss Jones sought to register May 12, 1944 to vote in the election of November 7, 1944, at which a Representative from the sixth congressional district and Presidential electors for

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Poll Tax

In her suit she attacked the constitutionality of the Virginia poll-tax statute. Answering her complaint, the Attorney General of Virginia said Miss Jones had failed to state a claim against the registrar upon which relief could be granted.

Mr. Plunkett told the committee that this defense flatly contradicted the testimony of Abraham P. Staples, former Attorney General of Virginia at hearings on anti-poll tax legislation September 22, 1942.

Mr. Staples had testified that the question of whether a state had exercised its constitutional power to prescribe the qualification of electors in an unconstitutional manner so as to deprive citizens of rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution was a judicial question for the courts to determine.

After Miss Jones asked the court for a summary judgment, in order to avoid a decision by the court the Attorney General of Virginia filed an amended answer admitting that a poll tax was not required of Miss Jones to vote in the 1944 election.

The second case concerned the refusal of the secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia to certify Henry L. Saunders as a candidate for Congress in 1943.