![]() That’s because, even if a person had wanted to put aside the roughly $1.50 a year it took to be allowed to vote, special elections were necessarily a surprise hit to voters’ wallets. But when it came to special elections, the poll tax was particularly onerous for all of Alabama’s poor. Some men could avoid taking the literacy test if they had served, or had fathers or grandfathers who served, in the Spanish American War, the Civil War or the War of 1812, a loophole that favored white voters. These moves disenfranchised both blacks and working-class whites. ![]() They came up with a poll tax, a literacy test and a property-ownership requirement to vote. The state’s constitution had been hashed out by lawyers, industrialists, bankers, planters and other businessmen who made up a state Constitutional Convention that met 1901. The Alabama voter base at the time was limited by state restrictions on voter registration, such as a poll tax and literacy test enforced by the 1901 Constitution, according to historian Wayne Flynt, an expert on Alabama history and the author of Southern Religion and Christian Diversity in the Twentieth Century. Senator Joseph Johnston that created a Senate vacancy that the Los Angeles Times described as “the first to test the authority of a Governor to fill a vacancy since the direct election amendment to the Constitution was adopted,” as quoted by the election history and predictions website Sabato’s Crystal Ball. 8, 1913, death of Alabama’s Democratic U.S. Senate vacancies, and depending on when the vacancy occurs, either the Governor appoints someone to serve the remainder of the term or a special election is held. Since the amendment’s ratification, states can choose how to fill U.S. Senators, but news reports of bribery and corruption had driven a push for reform around the turn of the 20th century. Before 1913, state legislators had picked U.S. Senator after the ratification of the 17th Amendment in April 1913. Senate fell on making Alabama the third state ( after Georgia and Maryland, respectively) where voters directly elected a U.S. The state’s first special election for the U.S. But, when the history of Alabama special elections began, those voters were largely disenfranchised. Jones - who has been framed in campaign ads as someone who “took on the Klan and got justice,” because he prosecuted white supremacists involved in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing - will have to score big with the state’s black voters if he stands a chance of winning. Senatorial election on Tuesday, many Americans likely see the results as a reflection on President Trump, but one Alabama historian sees the results as instead reflecting a dramatic and historic shift in the demographics of the state’s voter base. As Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones face off in Alabama’s sixth special U.S.
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