Voting Rights Act

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Voting Rights Act of 1965
89th United States Congress
Long title:	—
Introduced by:	—
Dates
Date passed:	August 3, 1965 (House) August 4, 1965 (Senate) July 13, 2006 (House) Renewed July 20, 2006 (Senate) Renewed
Date signed into law:	August 6, 1965
Amendments:	1970, 1975, 1982, 2006
Related legislation:	—

The National Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. § 1973-1973aa-6)^[1] outlawed the requirement that would-be voters in the United States take literacy tests to qualify to register to vote, and it provided for federal registration of voters in areas that had less than 50% of eligible minority voters registered. The act also provided for Department of Justice oversight to registration, and the Department's approval for any change in voting law in districts that had used a "device" to limit voting and in which less than 50% of the population was registered to vote in 1964. It was signed in 1965, and signed for a 25 year extension by President George W. Bush on July 27, 2006.

Contents 1 Background 2 Legislative history 2.1 Vote count 3 Periodic renewal 4 Section 2 5 Preclearance 5.1 States 5.2 Counties 5.3 Towns 6 Bail out 7 No Affirmative Right to Vote 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Background

Further information: Disfranchisement after the Civil War

The Thirteenth Amendment ratified in 1865 after the United States Civil War, abolished and prohibited slavery and secured a minimal degree of citizenship to former slaves. The Fourteenth Amendment ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all people “born or naturalized in the United States,” and includes the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. This amendment failed to explicitly prohibit vote discrimination on racial grounds.

The prohibition of voting rights discrimination on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of slavery was first codified by the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1870. Soon after the failure of Reconstruction, southern states found other means besides those enumerated in the Fifteenth Amendment to deny the vote to blacks, through violence, intimidation, via Jim Crow laws that included literacy tests, poll taxes, and also grandfather clauses that permitted otherwise disqualified voters whose grandfathers voted (thus allowing some white illiterates to vote), all with the aim and effect of re-imposing racially motivated restrictions on the voting process that prevented blacks from having political and economic power. Although the Fifteenth Amendment established particular voting rights, and gave Congress the authority to enforce those rights and regulate the voting process, the vote was still allowed to be withheld from most southern blacks and from non-white minorities throughout the U.S., from the the post-Reconstruction era through the 1960s.

In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was created with the mission to promote blacks' civil rights, including to "secure for them impartial suffrage." The NAACP's success was limited: despite some important judicial and legislative successes, many southern blacks remained disenfranchised through the early 1960s. Following the 1964 election, a variety of civil rights organizations banded together to push for the passage of legislation that would ensure black voting rights once and for all. The campaign to bring about federal intervention to prevent discrimination in voting culminated in the Selma to Montgomery marches and the murder of Viola Liuzzo, after which President Lyndon Baines Johnson, in a dramatic joint-session address, called upon Congress to enact a strong voting rights bill. Lyndon B. Johnson's administration drafted a bill intended to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, aiming to eliminate various previously legal strategies to prevent blacks and other minorities from voting.

[edit] Legislative history

The Act was sent to Congress by President Lyndon Johnson on March 17, 1965. The Senate passed the bill on May 11 (after a successful cloture vote on May 23); the House passed it on July 10. After differences between the two bills were resolved in conference, the House passed the Conference Report on August 3, the Senate on August 4. President Johnson signed the Act on August 6, 1965.

[edit] Vote count

The two numbers in each line of this list refer to the number of representatives voting in favor and against the act, respectively.

Senate: 77–19

• Democrats: 47–17
• Republicans: 30–2

House: 333–85

• Democrats: 221–61
• Republicans: 112–24

Conference Report:

Senate: 79–18

• Democrats: 49–17
• Republicans: 30–1

House: 328–74

• Democrats: 217–54
• Republicans: 111–20

Some votes were not included due to some Congressmen's absence.

[edit] Periodic renewal

The temporary provisions of the Voting Rights Act have been renewed four times and remain in force. They were renewed in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006. In the 1982 action, Congress amended the Act to make some sections (perhaps most importantly section 2) permanent while renewing the remainder (perhaps most importantly section 5) for 25 years, until (July 1, 2007).

In July 2006, forty-one years after the Voting Rights Act passed, renewal of the temporary provisions enjoyed widespread bi-partisan support. However, a number of Republican lawmakers acted to amend, delay or defeat renewal of the Act. One group of lawmakers led by Georgia congressman Lynn Westmoreland, came from some pre-clearance states, and claimed that it is no longer fair to target their states given the passage of time since 1965 and the changes that have taken place since then. Another group supported an amendment offered by Steve King of Iowa, seeking to strip provisions from the Act that require that translators or multilingual ballots be provided for U.S. citizens who do not speak English.^[2]

The bill to renew the act was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, 390-33, with support from Republican House leadership, led by Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr.. The U.S. Senate passed the bill 98–0. ^[3]

President George W. Bush signed the bill in a morning ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House on July 27, 2006, one year in advance of the 2007 expiration date. The audience included members of the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond and other prominent African Americans.^[4]

[edit] Section 2

Section 2 contains a general prohibition on voting discrimination, enforced through federal district court litigation. Congress amended this section in 1982, prohibiting any voting practice or procedure that has a discriminatory result. The 1982 amendment provided that proof of intentional discrimination is not required. The provision focused instead on whether the electoral processes is equally accessible to minority voters.^[5] This section is permanent and does not require renewal.

[edit] Preclearance

Section 5 of the Act requires that the United States Department of Justice "preclear" any attempt to change “any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting…”in any "covered jurisdiction." The Supreme Court gave a broad interpretation to the words "any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting" in Allen v. State Board of Election, 393 U.S. 544 (1969). A covered jusidiction that seeks to obtain Section 5 preclearance, either from the Attorney General or the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, must demonstrate that a proposed voting change does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of discriminating based on race or color. In some cases, they must also show that the proposed change does not have the purpose or effect of discriminating against a "language minority group." Membership in a language minority group includes “persons who are American Indian, Asian American, Alaskan Natives or of Spanish heritage.” The burden of proof under current Section 5 jurisprudence is on the covered jurisdiction to establish that the proposed change does not have a retrogressive purpose.^[6]

Covered jurisdictions may not implement voting changes without federal preclearance. The Justice Department has 60 days to respond to a request for a voting change. If the Justice Department or federal court rejects a request for preclearance, the jurisdiction may continue the prior voting practice or may adopt a substitute and seek preclearance for it. If the jurisdiction implements a voting change before the Justice Department denies preclearance in contravention of the Act, the jurisdiction must return to the pre-existing practice or enact a different change.

Those states which had less than 50% of the voting age population voting in 1960 and/or 1964 were originally covered. (This was when the average percentage of the voting age population participating in a presidential election was in the mid-60s instead of around 50% in 1996, 2000, and 2004.) In addition some counties and towns that have been found in violation of section 2 have since been added. Some counties in Virginia (see below) have been since found to no longer need preclarence.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recently reviewed the Justice Department preclearance record and found that the percentage of DOJ objections to submitted changes has declined markedly over the 40-year period of the Act:

• During the three legislative periods that the Commission examined, 1965–74, 1975–82, and 1982–2004, the number of submitted changes from jurisdictions rose substantially, from 4,998 to 414,927. The proportion of objections to submitted changes decreased throughout, from 5.5 percent in the first period to 1.2 percent in the second, and to 0.6 percent in the third. Over the last 10 years, the overall objection rate was so low as to be practically negligible, at less than 0.1 percent.^[7]

The Commission's two Democratic members dissented from the report, charging that the Commission had "abandon[ed] the field of battle." ^[8]

The jurisdictions listed below must be precleared

[edit] States

• Alabama
• Alaska
• Arizona
• Georgia
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• South Carolina
• Texas
• Virginia, except for eight counties (Augusta, Frederick, Greene, Pulaski, Roanoke, Shenandoah, and Warren) and three independent cities (Fairfax, Harrisonburg, and Winchester).

[edit] Counties

• California: Kings, Merced, Monterey, Yuba
• Florida: Collier, Hardee, Hendry, Hillsborough
• New York: Bronx, Kings, New York
• North Carolina: Anson, Beaufort, Bertie, Bladen, Camden, Caswell, Chowan, Cleveland, Craven, Cumberland, Edgecombe, Franklin, Gaston, Gates, Granville, Greene, Guilford, Halifax, Harnett, Hertford, Hoke, Jackson, Lee, Lenoir, Martin, Nash, Northampton, Onslow, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Person, Pitt, Robeson, Rockingham, Scotland, Union, Vance, Washington, Wayne, Wilson
• South Dakota: Shannon, Todd.

[edit] Towns

• Michigan: Clyde Township (Allegan County), Buena Vista Township
• New Hampshire: Rindge, Millsfield, Pinkham's Grant, Stewartstown, Stratford, Grafton County, Benton, Antrim, Boscawen, Newington, Unity

[edit] Bail out

The term "bail out" refers to the process by which covered jurisdictions may seek exemption from Section 5 coverage. In order to bail out, a covered jurisdiction needs to obtain a declaratory judgment from the District Court for the District of Columbia. The 11 Virginia jurisdictions not covered by Section 5 preclearance requirements have all successfully "bailed out."

Before August 1984, this process required covered jurisdictions to demonstrate that the voting test that they used immediately before coverage was not used in a discriminatory fashion. The 1982 amendment included two significant changes. First, Congress provided that where a state is covered in its entirety, individual counties in that state may separately bail out. Second, Congress completely redesigned the bailout standard. The post-1984 bailout standard requires that a covered jurisdiction demonstrate nondiscriminatory behavior during the 10 years prior to filing and while the action is pending and that it has taken affirmative steps to improve minority voting opportunities.^[9]

[edit] No Affirmative Right to Vote

While the title of the Voting Rights Act might imply that it established an explicit right to vote for U.S. citizens, there is no such federal right. However, the Voting Rights Act and three constitutional amendments that prevent discrimination in granting the franchise have established in United States Supreme Court jurisprudence that there is a "fundamental right" in the franchise, even though voting remains a state-granted privilege. Washington, DC, not being a State, has been granted only limited voting rights by the Congress, which controls the District "in all cases whatsoever", according to the District Clause of the Constitution.^[10] U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. re-introduced House Joint Resolution 28 in March, 2005, to amend the U.S. Constitution and create a federal right to vote.^[11] The resolution had 60 co-sponsors as of October, 2006.^[12]

[edit] References

1. ^ US Department of Justice - Voting Rights Act of 1965. U.S. Department of Justice (2006-03-20). Retrieved on July 12, 2006.
2. ^ "House delays vote on Voting Rights Act renewal", CNN.com, 2006-06-21. Retrieved on June 23, 2006.
3. ^ "Bush signs Voting Rights Act extension: Historic 1965 law renewed for 25 years", Associated Press, 2006-07-21. Retrieved on September 17, 2006.
4. ^ "" Bush Signs Voting Rights Act Extension", Washington Post, 2006-07-28. Retrieved on September 1, 2006.
5. ^ "U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Voting Rights Enorcement and Reauthorization: An Examination of the Act's Section 5 Preclearance Provision", April 2006. at 3.
6. ^ "U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Voting Rights Enorcement and Reauthorization: An Examination of the Act's Section 5 Preclearance Provision", April 2006. at 6
7. ^ "Voting Rights Enorcement and Reauthorization: An Examination of the Act's Section 5 Preclearance Provision", April 2006. at 62
8. ^ "Id.", April 2006. at 62 (Commissioners Michael Yaki and Arlan Melendez, dissenting).
9. ^ "U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Voting Rights Enorcement and Reauthorization: An Examination of the Act's Section 5 Preclearance Provision", April 2006.at 44.
10. ^ Reynolds v. Sims 377 U.S. 533, 561–562 (1964): "Undoubtedly, the right of suffrage is a fundamental matter in a free and democratic society. Especially since the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights, any alleged infringement of the right of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized. Almost a century ago, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, the Court referred to "the political franchise of voting" as "a fundamental political right, because preservative of all rights." 118 U.S. at 370.
11. ^ A Proposed Amendment to Establish a Constitutional Right to Vote in America (March 2005). Retrieved on June 23, 2006.
12. ^ H.J.RES.28. Library of Congress. Retrieved on June 23, 2006.

[edit] External links

• "Frequently Asked Questions on DOJ and Preclearance", from VotingLaw.com
• "More information from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights"
• U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Voting Rights Enforcement and Reauthorization: An Examination of the Act's Section 5 Preclearance Provision
• 11 Worst Places to Vote an article from Mother Jones Magazine
• Justice Talking: Voting Rights Act: Past, Present, and Future