One Person, No Vote (YA edition): How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally

by Carol Anderson

KEY COMPONENTS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 SECTION 2 prohibited impediments created to keep people from voting because of their race or color. SECTION 3 opened the door to the appointment of federal examiners to oversee voter registration in places where voting rights were violated. SECTION 4 authorized the federal government to intervene in elections in states and political subdivisions (such as cities and counties) where discrimination was flagrant. Those states and political subdivisions would be determined based on a formula laid out in 4(b). It would apply to places where the US attorney general found that a literacy test, for example, had been in use on November 1, 1964, and where on November 1, 1964, less than 50 percent of eligible voters were registered or if in the presidential election of 1964 less than 50 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot. When the math was done, authorities determined that the places that needed to be watched were six states of the old Confederacy (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia) and 39 counties of another state: North Carolina (which has a total of 100 counties). The covered jurisdictions would be subject to section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Section 4 also had a bail-out provision: places could be released from federal scrutiny if, after five years, they proved that they had not engaged in any dirty tricks when it came to voting and voting registration. SECTION 5 stated that jurisd...