New-York tribune., 1901-07-29
SUFFRAGE PLANS IN VIRGINIA

III current forecasts from Richmond are veri-
fed the suffrage clauses OF the new Virginia
constitution will eclipse in picturesqueness and
variety all previous Southern efforts 10 strip
the negro, as such, of the elective franchise
Since Mississippi took the lead. ten years ago,
in purging her electorate through the appar-
emily simple, but in fact marvellously elastic
and effective understanding" test. Southern
suffrage restriction schemes have become
steadily more cumbersome and more compli-
Gated. Presumably it was argued that in
multiplicity Of devices lay greater immunity
from hostile challenge: that if one test failed or
was pronounced repugnant TO the guarantees of
the Fifteenth Amendment others would survive
10 accomplish that disfranchisement of the
negro. ostensibly an illiterate or a delir,-
quent, but really as a negro, at which every re.
cent constitutional revision in the Southern
States has aimed.
Louisiana and North Carolina accordingly
broadened the Mississippi suffrage plan by ex-
empting from the penalties Of ilite->sy the de-
scendants-necessarily all white-of I.- :nts who
had voted in elections prior to negro enfran-
cbisement. Alabama's Constitutional Conyen-
tion, now in session, has virtually decided TO
add as exemptions from disqualification under
her new system descent from an ancestor who
performed military service in any war up TO
and Including the War of he Rebellion. or pos
session of reputation for good citizenship
this reputation 10 be adjudged by the local Of
ficials who control the registry and count the
vote. Alabama also proposes TO enforce against
all non-eXempts poll tax and property re-
qurement which. if applied with any severity
10 her electorate as whole, would cut off at
stroke perhaps one-third of her present qualified
vote. Ii has been left for the Virginia con-
stituticn makers however, 10 devise a still more
complicated scheme. both of exemptions and Of
qualifications. The committee charged with
framing suffrage section has been struggling
over the details of two or three rival drafts:
but their agreement on all essentials seems TO
insure the submission to the convention of a
suffrage restriction project more novel and in
tricate than any hitherto broached.
Senator John W. Daniel is the author of the
draft most in favor and i'm it he insists that a
voter must hereafter possess property valued
at $500 at least, must pay a poll tax of 50 at
least six months before Election Day, and must
he able TO read the constitution or understand
il when read. Such tests would disfrancbise
many thousands of white voters as well as black
voters; so the exemption thmberig game must
be unblushingly resorted 10. All persons over
sixty years OF age are 10 vote without chal-
lenge. are all who have borne arms in the
service Of the United States, of the Confederate
States or Of the State of Virginia But no vet
Grams who draw salaries or pensions of any
sort can claim exemption, thus barring from
the benefits OF the waiver all the white or
coiored ex-soldiers who have taken or wish to
take advantage OF. the Federal pension laws.
AS crownng discrimination. election boards
-fe to be permitted to create a further exempt