Word: polled
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...Gallup poll, which as late as mid-August had reported probable Democratic gains in the House in November, indicated that, on the basis of present sentiment, Republicans would gain 21 seats, mostly in Eastern and Midwest States...
Already in the hopper was another bill, by Florida's stanch New Deal Senator Claude Pepper, to outlaw poll taxes altogether...
...Poll taxes were originally a great forward-looking democratic experiment, a liberalization of laws giving the vote only to property owners. But after the Civil War, the Solid South turned them to a new purpose: keeping Negroes and white trash away from the polls...
...could be sure what effect this week's action by Congress might eventually have on Southern politics. By holding down the vote, the poll tax has made it easy for small machines (like Senator Harry Byrd's Virginia "courthouse crowd") to run an entire State. It has also helped preserve the South's one-party system, where final results are determined in the Democratic primary, not the general election...
Some of the long-winded Congressional debate was on the issue of State's rights. But mostly the fight was purely and simply over poll taxes, with conservative Southerners attacking. Mississippi's John E. ("Silent John") Rankin called the bill: "A monstrosity. ... It is part of a long-range communistic program to change our form of government and our way of life." Cried Alabama's Sam Hobbs: "The worst thing since Reconstruction...