The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in the aftermath of the Civil War, were designed to protect, among other things, the right of every eligible citizen to vote, free from racial discrimination. Notwithstanding those constitutional safeguards, measures designed to deprive minorities of that right such as poll taxes, literacy taxes, and grandfather clauses endured for another century. In early 1965, President Johnson announced that he was sending Congress a voting rights act, saying “many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily than the duty we have to insure that right.” Soon thereafter, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted and is widely credited as the most successful civil rights law in American history.
Critical to the law’s success has been Section 5, the preclearance provision, which bars jurisdictions with flagrant histories of racial discrimination (“covered” jurisdictions) from adopting new election laws until they prove to the Department of Justice or a special federal court panel that the laws have neither a discriminatory purpose or effect. Section 5 effectuated a transformative burden shift and it worked.
