One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy

by Carol Anderson

What remedy, then, was available to the federal government for those who mocked the Fifteenth Amendment, skewed and skewered elections, and placed in power those who held the Constitution in contempt? The Supreme Court admitted that the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and 1960 simply did not work: Litigation has been exceedingly slow, in part because of the ample opportunities for delay … Even when favorable decisions have finally been obtained, some of the States … merely switched to discriminatory devices not covered by the federal decrees, or … enacted difficult new tests designed to prolong the existing disparity between white and Negro registration. Alternatively, certain local officials have defied and evaded court orders or have simply closed their registration offices to freeze the voting rolls.