Thus, it will be seen that Arkansas, Missouri, South Carolina, and Tennessee require the prepayment of a poll-tax, while Delaware requires the payment of a registration fee of $1; that Georgia and Pennsylvania require the prepayment of taxes, while South Carolina, Louisiana, and Virginia require the payment of taxes in the alternative, another alternative being that the voter must, in South Carolina and Louisiana, as in California, be able to read and write, while in Virginia, as in Mississippi, he is required only to be able to read or understand the Constitution when read to him, though in Virginia this last requirement was only for two years; and after two years the voter must be able to read and write. Louisiana excepts those whose father or grandfather was entitled to vote on January 1, 1867, and Virginia excepts until 1904 those who were soldiers or seamen or whose fathers served as soldiers or seamen in time of war. Vermont, on the other hand, has the singular requirement that the voter must “obtain the approbation of the local board of civil authority”—a requirement which would seem to place the qualification wholly at the mercy of the party in power. Though the representation in Congress of the Southern States would appear at present to be greater than the recorded vote of those States would entitle them to, the inequality is by no means so real as it appears, and is not greater than that which exists between some of the Eastern and Western States.[55] It has been well shown by the same distinguished member of the New York Bar already quoted that “the disparity between the Southern States where the ignorant Negro vote has been practically eliminated and the Eastern States, though glaring, is less than that between the Eastern States and some of the Western States. For example, “Rhode Island’s vote is 1.59 times as great as Alabama’s, but South Dakota’s is 3.39 as great as that of Rhode Island. Vermont’s is 2.22 times as great as Florida’s, but Utah’s is 3.01 as great as Vermont’s. Maine’s is 2.36 as great as Georgia’s, but Colorado’s is 3.48 times as great as Maine’s.”[56] The figures cited fail to give the strength of the Southern vote. The small vote in the Southern States is due partly to the fact that the ascendancy of one political party is so great that voters do not feel it necessary to attend the polls. In the next place, though it was frankly admitted that the motive of the disfranchisement clauses was to disfranchise the ignorant colored vote, while the ignorant white vote was admitted for a time, provided the voters or their fathers had been soldiers, this is but a temporary inequality; and that the ignorant colored vote does not come within the grandfather clause or other saving clauses is an incident of the time. In a comparatively short time the effect of these saving clauses will have passed away and the suffrage will be based on a purely educational or property qualification.