Largely the work of the attorney and legislator Edward McCrady, the law provided for separate ballot boxes for each of eight types of office, including, for example, state senator, state representative, congressman, governor, lieutenant governor, and other statewide offices. Any ballot cast in an incorrect box was disallowed. In an early draft of the law, the only way to identify the boxes was by labels written on them; thus the system served as an effective literacy test. In the final version, however, election managers were required, “on the demand of the voter,” to read the labels to the voter. This provision allowed for discriminatory enforcement: the election manager could read the correct labels to an illiterate white man but read incorrect labels to an illiterate black man. Such action would be a violation of state law, not federal law, and would be difficult to prove in court.
Congress passed this act to send the remaining Indian tribes to the unsettled western territories. The reason why this act was passed was probably so that the land in the existing borders could be used.
