The Voting Rights Act Of 1965

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)

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

“The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.” In the 1880’s poll taxes and literacy requirements that afterward advocated African Americans to vote. Meanwhile Klan violence frightens from police and employers, blacks were still “protesting”about voting rights. As a result, there were over two dozen blacks serving in state congress across some

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 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

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.

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.

Yet, there are still cases that pop up every now and then. The Supreme Court has set up rules like compact and contiguous districts, physically adjoining districts, and the one-person, one-vote rule. That last one is most important because it affects everyone. Every person’s vote must equal the same. Even if district are redrawn to give more power to minorities, it is still giving an unfair because it lend strength towards the democratic party, to which minorities are more likely to vote. Gerrymandering is a threat to the weight that the average person’s vote carries and that is a threat to the fairness and unbiasedness of elections.

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

This document sets a right to give the many African Americans whom have been through countless amounts of racial discrimination and segregation the right to vote. It was produced mainly to propose the segregation and racial discrimination that was being given to the people of different race and color. Soon after passage of the VRA, federal examiners began voter registration and an immense increase in black voter registration was shown. It was produced so that the right to vote would be free, fair, and accessible to all Americans despite race or

Following the Civil War and freeing of slaves all over America a new question arose: Should black people be able to vote? Further, were they even citizens in the fullest sense? Now freed from slavery, black Americans found themselves in a political limbo where they were no longer property but not fully citizens. In an effort to extend protection from discrimination at the poll booth, an amendment to the Constitution was passed declaring it unlawful to deny voting on account of race. This amendment, however, was met with unprecedented resistance. Suppression of the black vote was just one step in preventing black Americans from being treated as citizens.

Analysts explained: This ruling of the Supreme Court gave 9 states power to make their own election law, which overthrew the essential principle of the Voting Rights Act. The Court believed that the decision was right because the American society had changed: “While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy the problem speaks to current conditions” (Mears & Botehlo). Right after the ruling, ‘Texas announced shortly after the decision that a voter identification law that had been blocked would go into effect immediately, and that redistricting maps there would no longer need federal approval” (Liptak). This ruling brought strong opposition, the main reason being that the Voting Rights Act had benefited the United States profoundly by protecting people who were fighting for their equal rights. Opponents pointed out that there were still people fighting for their

In 1973 Congress amended the Voting Rights Act and extended protections to members of “languages minorities.” The new language minorities’ classification meant that the act’s protection now extended to voters non-English speaking minorities. These classifications included those who spoke Spanish, Native American languages, Native Alaskan languages, and Asian languages. Some of the changes to the new amendment within the Voting Rights Act prohibited literacy tests as a requirement for voter registration. It also required jurisdictions with large minority language speaking populations to have non-English speaking ballots as well as oral voting instructions that conformed to the language minorities within their districts. Additionally, the new amendments to the Voting Rights Act also protected minorities from voter dilution (the nullification of minority group votes through a

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.

Historically in America, voting has been a relatively discriminatory practice. It has limited and deprived many individuals of many diverse races, ethnicities, and walks of life from casting their votes to select the individual who they feel is most educated, and skilled to represent their interests. Not only has this been proven to be wrong by discriminating minority groups in voting, it also has proved to be a process, which minimizes the largest growing demographics in the country. Furthermore, with millennials growing to become more politically active, minority groups are becoming more politically involved than ever. Taking this into account an important question that is raised by the author William Eskridge in his book “Legislation and Statutory Interpretation” is “Would minorities be better off with more representatives who had to pay attention to their interests because they are a powerful and organized constituency, rather than with a few representatives of minority districts who specialize in protecting only their interests?” (Eskridge,Frickley,& Garrett, 2006, pp.55).