Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 15, 1992                   TAG: 9203130401
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THAT FEE'S A POLL TAX; IT'S BACK-ROOM POLITICS

Remember? The good ol' boys gathered in back rooms manipulating things, like when was the best time to have the party meetin' so's that only the ones who was to vote for their candidate could make it.

Or they would try to come up with some kind of test to determine who was qualified to vote or run in an election or how much the poll tax ought to be in order to "weed" out those undesirable trouble-making minorities.

And if you mentioned conflict of interest to a politician back then, he'd just throw back his head and laugh out of the side of his mouth that didn't have the cigar in it.

If that's the kind of politics you want, folks, then "Happy days are here again."

Myself, I'm a bit incensed that the Republican Party leadership in Montgomery County thinks I'm going to roll over, play dead and cast my vote for them on the way down. As my teen-age son would say: "Not."

George Bell has decided he wants a mass meeting on April 21 and he wants the delegates to pre-file so he, or somebody, can make sure they are qualified to be delegates. Then he wants to charge us 5 bucks just to attend and vote for those delegates we want to represent our views in the upcoming conventions. This sounds a bit like back-room politics to me.

"Prequalifying" is a throwback to the literacy requirements to vote of the "Old South," and the 5-buck fee for the mass meeting is nothing less than a poll tax.

Come on, George, the Republican Party is having a hard enough time convincing average hard-working Americans that it cares about them and the high cost of living they face.

I'm going to the mass meeting and I plan to run as an uncommitted delegate, and if George or anybody else wants my vote, the first thing they're gonna have to do is repeal that poll tax and convince me that they know what it's like to have to scrape up 5 bucks for anything.\ Roy Scott Blacksburg