Which practice, limited to white voters in a Democratic party primary in the old South, was ruled unconstitutional by Smith v. Allwright (1944)?

• A. White Primary
• B. Literacy Test
• C. Poll Tax
• D. Jim Crow Laws

Answer: (A)

The key idea here is that when electoral rules are carried out or sanctioned by the state, excluding voters on the basis of race violates the Fifteenth Amendment. Smith v. Allwright held that a whites-only primary in the Democratic Party was unconstitutional because the primary functioned as the actual election in many Southern states and the state had effectively delegated authority over that process to the party. Allowing a private party to exclude Black voters from the primary meant the state was denying them a meaningful chance to influence elections, which the Constitution forbids.

Literacy tests, poll taxes, and Jim Crow laws were other tools of disenfranchisement, but this ruling specifically targeted the whites-only primary as an unconstitutional state-enabled restriction on voting.