VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 AND ITS AMENDMENTS 79 Stat. 437 (1965)

Despite Congress's efforts in the civil rights acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964 to protect the right to vote, the case-by-case approach of these laws proved ineffective in dealing with denials of voting rights to millions of blacks. By 1965, only seventy-one voting rights cases had been filed by the Department of Justice. And in 1964 only 19.4, 6.4, and 31.8 percent of eligible blacks were registered to vote in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, respectively. In Louisiana, comparable white registration stood at 80.2 percent.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, amended in 1970, 1975, and 1982, provided additional protection of the right to vote. The 1965 act's most extraordinary features, its pre-clearance requirements, applied only to states or political subdivisions with low voter registration or participation. In such jurisdictions, most of which were in the South, the act suspended literacy, educational, and character tests of voter qualifications used to deny the right to vote in any elections. In addition, with a view to New York's Puerto Rican population, the act prohibited conditioning the right to vote on any English comprehension requirement for anyone who had completed sixth grade in a school in which the predominant classroom language was other than English. States and political subdivisions subject to the suspension of voting tests were barred from implementing other voting practices that had the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote without obtaining preclearance from a federal court or the attorney general.

The Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970 and 1975 enhanced the preclearance provisions. The 1965 act's coverage had been triggered by low electoral participation in the 1964 election. The 1970 amendments extended the preclearance requirement through 1975 and suspended voting qualification tests or devices until 1975 in all jurisdictions, not just in jurisdictions covered by other provisions of the original 1965 act. The 1975 amendments extended the preclearance requirement through 1982 and suspended tests or devices indefinitely. The 1970 and 1975 amendments also added 1968 and 1972 to 1964 as years in which low electoral participation would trigger the act's coverage. The 1982 amendments imposed new preclearance standards to be effective until 2007.

The Supreme Court has taken an expansive view of the procedures covered by the act's preclearance requirement. In Allen v. State Board of Elections (1969), Dougherty County Board of Education v. White (1978), and other cases, the Court applied the act to voting practices that might affect minority voter effectiveness, as well as to practices directly limiting voter registration. Under these rulings, the act's preclearance requirements would govern changes in voting districts, or a county board of education's requirement that employees seeking elective office take an unpaid leave of absence.

A change in voting procedure raises the question whether the change triggers the act's preclearance requirement by having the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote. In deciding whether the requisite effect exists, the Supreme Court has held that the act covers effects even if they are not discriminatorily motivated. This standard, which is more stringent than the purposeful discrimination requirement the Court applies under the fourteenth amendment and fifteenth amendment, was upheld against constitutional attack in Rome v. United States (1980).

In addition to the preclearance requirements, the 1965 act included a nationwide prohibition upon voting qualifications or standards that deny or abridge voting rights on account of race. This prohibition applies whether the governmental unit is subject to the act's preclearance requirements or not. And, unlike the preclearance requirements, which apply only to changes in voting procedures, it applies to procedures that have long been in effect. A plurality opinion in mobile v. bolden (1980) suggested that this provision only proscribed purposeful discrimination prohibited by the Constitution. In the 1982 amendments, however, Congress rejected a purposeful discrimination requirement and set forth standards governing findings of discriminatory effect.

In one of its remedies, the 1965 act continued and expanded a method of guaranteeing voting rights initiated in the force act of 1871. On a showing of widespread denials of voting rights, the act authorized a federal court to appoint federal voting examiners who themselves would examine and register voters for all elections, thereby superseding state election officials.

Addressing problems not covered by the 1965 act, the 1970 amendments lowered from twenty-one to eighteen the minimum voting age for all elections, prohibited states from imposing residency requirements in presidential elections, and provided for uniform national rules for absentee voting in presidential elections. The 1975 amendments also sought to overcome linguistic barriers to political participation by requiring bilingual elections in certain political subdivisions. These language provisions brought Texas and Florida under the act's coverage. The 1982 amendments changed the expiration date of these provisions from 1985 to 1992, and added voter assistance provisions for the handicapped.

In general, the 1965 act and amendments have fared well in the Supreme Court. In south carolina v. katzenbach (1966) and katzenbach v. morgan (1966) the Court upheld the constitutionality of the act. Following the Court's decision in national league of cities v. usery (1976) that certain integral state operations are beyond Congress's power to regulate under the commerce clause, the constitutional attack was renewed. In Rome v. United States (1980) the Court held this argument inapplicable to cases involving Congress's power to enforce the Civil War amendments. In United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v. Carey, (1977) the Court held that use of racial criteria to favor minority voters in an effort to comply with the Voting Rights Act did not violate the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments. In oregon v. mitchell (1970) the Supreme Court sustained most of the 1970 amendments but invalidated lowering the voting age in state and local elections. The latter ruling in Mitchell, however, soon was overturned by the twenty-sixth amendment.

The Voting Rights Act has been the most measurably successful civil rights statute. In most southern states the gap between black and white voter registration shrank dramatically, and the number of elected black officials tripled between 1970 and 1975. Overt racial appeals no longer are a routinely successful part of southern political campaigns. The 1975 amendments confirmed a shift in attitude on civil rights matters. For the first time in the twentieth century, a majority of southern congressmen voted in favor of a federal civil rights statute.

Theodore Eisenberg
(1986)

Bibliography

Bell, Derrick A., Jr. 1980 Race, Racism and American Law, 2nd ed. Boston: Little, Brown.

Dorsen, Norman et al. 1979 Emerson, Haber, and Dorsen's Political and Civil Rights in the United States, 4th ed. Vol. 2: 609–685. Boston: Little, Brown.

United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary 1982 Senate Report No. 97–417, 97th Congress, 2d Session.