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The Voting Rights Act of is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement Impact Of The Voting Rights Act Of August 6,and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections. According to the U. Department of Justicethe Act is considered to be the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country. The act contains numerous provisions that regulate elections. The act's "general provisions" provide nationwide protections for voting rights. Section 2 is a general provision that prohibits every state and local government from imposing any voting law that results in discrimination against racial or language minorities.

Other general provisions specifically outlaw literacy tests and similar devices that were historically used to disenfranchise racial minorities. The act also contains "special provisions" that apply to only certain jurisdictions.

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more info A core special provision is the Section 5 preclearance requirement, which prohibits certain jurisdictions from implementing any change affecting voting without receiving preapproval from the U. District Court for D. Section 5 and most other special provisions apply to jurisdictions encompassed by the "coverage formula" prescribed in Section 4 b. The coverage formula was originally designed to encompass jurisdictions that engaged in egregious voting discrimination inand Congress updated the formula in and In Shelby County v.

Holderthe U. Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula as unconstitutional, reasoning that it was no longer responsive to current conditions. As initially ratified, the United States Constitution granted each state complete discretion to determine voter qualifications for its residents. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits slavery "except as a punishment for crime"; the Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship to anyone "born or naturalized in the United States" and guarantees every person due process Impact Of The Voting Rights Act Of equal protection rights; and the Fifteenth Amendment provides that "[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

The acts criminalized the obstruction of a citizen's voting rights and provided for federal supervision of the electoral process, including voter registration. Cruikshank and United States v. Southern states generally sought to disenfranchise racial minorities during and after Reconstruction. From toelectoral fraud and violence throughout the South suppressed the African-American vote.

In Giles v. Harristhe court held that regardless of the Fifteenth Amendment, the judiciary did not have the remedial power to force states to register racial minorities to vote. Prior to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of there were several efforts to stop the disenfranchisement of black voters by Southern states, [7] for in the s the Civil Rights Movement increased pressure on the federal government to protect the voting rights of racial minorities.

InCongress passed the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction: the Civil Rights Act of This legislation authorized the attorney general to sue for injunctive relief on behalf of persons whose Fifteenth Amendment rights were denied, created the Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice to enforce civil rights through litigation, and created the Commission on Civil Rights to investigate voting rights deprivations.

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Further protections were enacted in the Civil Rights Act ofwhich allowed federal courts to appoint referees to conduct voter registration in jurisdictions that engaged in voting discrimination against racial minorities. Although these acts helped empower courts to remedy violations of federal voting rights, strict legal standards made it difficult for the Department of Justice to successfully pursue litigation. For example, to win a discrimination lawsuit against a state that maintained a literacy test, the Department needed to prove that the rejected voter-registration applications of racial minorities were comparable to the accepted applications of whites.

This involved comparing thousands of applications in each of the state's counties in a process that could last months. The Department's efforts were further hampered by resistance from local election officials, who would claim to have misplaced Impact Of The Voting Rights Act Of voter registration records of racial minorities, remove registered racial minorities from the electoral rollsand resign so that voter registration ceased. Moreover, the Department often needed to appeal lawsuits several times before the judiciary provided relief because many federal district court judges opposed racial minority suffrage.]