Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act

The main contemporary federal policy that will be examined is the amendments that have been made to the voting acts which empowered states to decide and make judgments on who is eligible to vote. The research will look into how this undermines the rights to vote in our modern society. In particular, the research will focus on the amendment made on the 1965 voting rights act that internationally defined eligibility of a voter with the inclusion of minority groups. A ruling made by the Supreme Court in 2013 gave power to states to determine and register eligible voters. This in my opinion, and from data collected from different articles gave states a chance to create more restrictions on voting rights. Social welfare associations think that beneficiaries of such laws have created a status quo which results in discrimination. The research will look at the impact of such contemporary policies and examine its effect on voting rights and societal perception of inequality.

Most change can be caused by people or something with significant value. Occasionally people forget that change can also be caused by pieces of paper. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a law passed that primarily gave African Americans the right to vote without having to take any sort of literacy tests. African Americans were widely ignored in voting rights because they were forced to take literacy tests to be eligible to vote. Having this event in our nation’s civil rights movement was a landmark that allowed the other half of our nation’s voice to be heard. “The Voting Rights Act itself has been called the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by Congress.”(Laney 65)

The Voting Rights act of 1965 was established on August 6, 1965. This law was set to outlaw discrimination of voting practices adopted in many Southern States after the civil war, including literary test as a prerequisite to voting. The act was signed into law by former president Lyndon Johnson after a century of deliberate and violent denial of the vote to African- Americans in the South and latinos in the Southwest as well as many years of entrenched electoral systems that shut out citizens with limited fluency in english. The voting Rights act of 1965 has traced back to the 14th and 15th Amendment where it grants citizenships to all persons born in the united states including former slaves and provided all citizens with equal protection

Throughout America’s history the franchise has been withheld from different groups. This has been possible due to weakly written laws that do not provide adequate protections. In 1965 PL 89-110 was passed, this law, commonly known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, finally provided real protections for minorities living in southern states. In recent years the language of the law was modified within the Supreme Court to take away the law’s primary power. In the following mock Congressional testimony we will go back to 1848, 13 years before the American Civil War, and provide evidence of why a law like PL 89-110 is necessary and commendable.

Nearly 100 years after the 15th amendment was ratified, vast disparities and blatant discrimination in voting process and practice were still pervasive, particularly in certain southern states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) was enacted by congress to address this enduring inequity. Section 5 of the VRA requires that states meeting criteria set out in section 4(b) of the act, must obtain federal “preclearance” before enacting any laws that affect voting. Section 4(b) provides the conditions for the preclearance requirement as state or jurisdictions where less than 50% of minorities were registered to vote in 1964.

My research topic is the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and I chose this topic because I always found it amusing that it took so long for African Americans to legally be allowed to vote. I also thought this topic was appropriate since we now have an African American president, and the African Americans citizens need to know that voting I important because we didn’t always have that right.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits voting discrimination. With the condition to receive preclearance stated in section 5 of the Act from the Department of Justice before making any changes affecting the voting process, also came four other prohibitions. The prohibition of literacy test or other similar test or devices as a prerequisite to voter registration is one prevention. The requirement of jurisdictions with significant language minority populations to provide non-English ballots and oral voting instructions is another. Third is the prohibition of vote dilution, which is the remapping of districts to suppress the minority vote. The final provision was one of the most controversial of the Act. It established the federal oversight

Soon after passage of the Voting Rights Act, federal examiners were conducting voter registration, and black voter registration began a sharp increase. The cumulative effect of the Supreme Court’s decisions, Congress’ enactment of voting rights legislation, and the ongoing efforts of concerned private citizens and the Department of Justice, has been to restore the right to vote guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Voting Rights Act itself has been called the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by

Thus, when faced with arbitrary legislative action or inaction, judicial intervention “is not only appropriate but essential” to protect citizens’ constitutional rights. Furthermore, when the Court resolves constitutional questions that, for whatever reasons, elected representatives, cannot, its rulings can guide lower courts, legislators, and citizens concerning the scope of individual rights and permissibility of governmental conduct. When the Court applies the standing doctrine regardless of legislative inertia or entrenchment, some citizens are left with rights but no remedies and a government that is unaccountable and unresponsive to its citizens.

The voting rights act of 1965 was designed to prohibit discrimination based on race, and requires certain jurisdictions to prove bilingual assistance to language minority voters. The act banned the use of literacy tests, provided for federal oversight of voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the nonwhite population had not registered to vote. Still voting rights gave African American voters the legal means to challenge voting restrictions and vastly improved voter turnout. In Mississippi alone, voter turnout among blacks increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969. When the law was first passed, they made the blacks take a test to be able to vote. (history.com). Since 1965 the voting rights act has protected

On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court made its final decision on the Shelby County, Alabama v Holder, deeming Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, passed by Congress in 1965 and extended several times, unconstitutional. Section 5, although not being struck down, became insignificant without its triggering formula, Section 4, to determine the coverage. This Supreme Court decision took away the key parts of the Voting Rights Act, which was an important method for the federal government to oversee and enforce the enfranchisement of African-Americans in some states. While justifying their decision, the Court mentioned that Section 4 only applied to specific states and it was against the idea of equal sovereignty of all states in the Constitution. What is more, the Congress’ justification of these unequal actions towards those states in 2006, was based on 40-year old data showing that it was still an exceptional condition, which cannot reflect the current situations and needs of the country.

Shelby County v. Holder is a hugely important in the United States Supreme Court case related to the (whether or not something agrees with the Constitution) of to legal rules of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which demands certain states and local governments to get federal preclearance before putting into use of any changes to their voting laws or practices; and Section 4,which contains the coverage formula that decides which legal controls are subjected to preclearance based on their histories of(unfair treatment based on skin color, age, etc.) in voting.I disagree with the decision because The big pattern of (unfair treatment based on skin color, age, etc.) that led the Court to before that judge as corrected in Section 5 of the Voting Rights

The Voting Rights Act 42 U.S.C. §§ 1973 et seq., decision is important regarding the laws governing voting rights and their relationship to minority voters. Its implication and effects however does not end within the legal realms and dimensions but continues through to society, culture, and human rights. The Voting Rights Act initially established in 1965 under Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration protected “racial minorities” from biased voting practices. It was a huge stride in the civil rights movement and a victory over harmful, archaic, and biased voting practices and traditions.

One of the first changes in voting rights began with issuing literacy tests to limited individuals in hopes to earn a chance to vote. Specifically, the 1965 Alabama Literacy Test was given to African Americans before they were declared eligible to vote. This practice was intended to keep African Americans from having any input when it came to voting. The idea of this literacy test was to give African Americans the chance to earn the right to vote but, would not guarantee that right. The 1965 Alabama Literacy Test was part of voter discrimination by only requiring a certain group of individuals participate in taking it. The 1965 Alabama Literacy Test was intended to be challenging to