The Voting Rights Act (VRA) (codified at 52 U.S.C. Subtitle I) prohibits certain discriminatory voting practices. Congress passed the VRA during the civil rights movement in 1965 with the aim to buttress and protect voters’ Fifteenth Amendment rights, which were at the time widely violated across states in the South. The VRA initially protected only racial minorities, but in 1975, Congress extended its protections to members of “language minorities,” including voters who speak Spanish, Native American languages, Alaskan Native languages, and Asian languages.
The VRA prevents voting discrimination in several ways. For example, it prohibits literacy tests or similar “tests or devices” as a prerequisite to voter registration, and it requires jurisdictions with significant language minority populations to provide non-English ballots and oral voting instructions. The VRA also protects minorities from vote dilution. In areas with particularly significant discrimination problems, the VRA authorizes federal examiners to directly register voters and observe polling places. Finally, it requires areas with certain histories of voting discrimination to “preclear” changes to their voting laws, though the Supreme Court has since ruled that some elements of this last provision are no longer constitutional.
Vote Dilution
Section 2 of the VRA prohibits drawing election districts in ways that improperly dilute minorities’ voting power. This prohibition applies to states, counties, cities, school districts, and any other governmental units that hold elections. There are two typical forms of vote dilution: “cracking” and “packing.” “Cracking” occurs when election officials split a single minority community into enough separate election districts that the community could not influence any single district’s elections. In contrast, “packing” occurs when election officials dilute a minority’s voting power by concentrating minority voters from otherwise distinct communities into a single district, reducing that minority’s representation in other districts.
Preclearance
Section 5 of the VRA prohibits “covered” jurisdictions - states and counties determined by Section 4(b) (now located at 52 U.S.C. § 10303)—from changing their voting laws without first getting preclearance from either the United States Attorney General or a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Section 4(b) defined covered jurisdictions as those that had a voting test in place as of November 1, 1964, and less than 50% turnout for the 1964 presidential election. Originally enacted for only five years, Section 5 was renewed by Congress and has been continuously renewed ever since. The constitutionality of such renewal was challenged in Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013). In Shelby, the Supreme Court held that Section 4(b)‘s coverage burdens, which made sense in the 1960s and 1970s, were no longer responsive to current voting conditions in the covered jurisdictions, and therefore unconstitutionally restricted the power to regulate elections reserved to the states. However, the Court left the remainder of Section 5 intact.
Please visit the U.S. Department of Justice website and see 52 U.S. Code for more information about voting rights.
[Last updated in September of 2024 by the Wex Definitions Team]
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