The Voting Rights Act at 40: The Battle is Not Yet Over
As the nation celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), civil rights groups and voting rights experts around the country highlighted the importance of this historic legislation and the continued need to ensure that the right to vote is secured for all Americans.
The VRA, often considered to be the most successful civil rights legislation ever enacted, prohibits discrimination based on race, and requires certain jurisdictions to provide bilingual assistance to language minority voters.
According to Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), "On a more basic level, the VRA also stands as a powerful tool to check the persistent impulse to discriminate that has plagued our nation since its founding."
Spurred by the events of "Bloody Sunday," when peaceful protesters were met on a bridge outside Selma, Alabama with clubs and violence, President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to call for an effective voting rights bill.
"What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life," Johnson said. "Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome."
Five months after Selma, a bipartisan Congress passed the Voting Rights Act and President Johnson signed it into law on August 6, 1965.
The huge increase in minority elected officials, as well as the many other elections in which minority citizens have been able to elect candidates of their choice is a testament to the Act's success. In 1964, there were approximately 300 African Americans in public office nationwide, including just three in Congress. There are now more than 9,100 black elected officials, including 43 members of Congress, the largest number ever.
The VRA also has opened the political process for many of the more than 6,000 Latino public officials that have been elected and appointed nationwide, including approximately 260 elected at the state or federal level, 27 of whom serve in Congress. Native Americans, Asians and others who have historically encountered harsh barriers to full political participation also have benefited greatly.
Three key provisions of the VRA will expire in 2007 if not renewed by Congress—the federal preclearance provision (Section 5); section 203 (which requires certain jurisdictions to provide translated ballots and assistance to citizens who are limited English proficient); and provisions that authorize the Department of Justice to send federal observers to monitor elections where there is evidence of intimidation directed toward minority voters.
The Continuing Challenges
Even after 1982, when Congress reauthorized the VRA with the strongest legislation ever, controversy continued in the courts, particularly over the requirements of Section 5.
In addition, litigation over state compliance with the VRA continues. Most recently, on July 14, a three-judge panel issued an injunction against the state of South Dakota requiring state officials to comply with the VRA and obtain approval from the Department of Justice for an emergency bill, House Bill 1265, which would allow counties to redraw district lines more than once per decade.
From its initial passage of the Voting Rights Act, Congress has relied on an extensive record of discrimination in voting to justify the need for the remedies that were time-limited under the law. The nonpartisan, blue ribbon National Commission on the Voting Rights Act, a collaboration of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and other civil rights groups, has begun holding hearings around the country to gather data and information, and will ultimately develop a comprehensive report detailing discrimination in voting since 1982, the last time the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized.
Civil rights groups and voting rights experts are celebrating 40 years of unparalleled access to voting for all Americans, but as LCCR Executive Director Wade Henderson said in a statement marking the anniversary, "There is no better way to celebrate the VRA than to recommit the nation to preserving and strengthening the Act."
