Fifty years ago, in signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson called it "one of the most monumental laws in the entire history of American freedom.”
Culminating decades of civil unrest and bloodshed, it banned discrimination based on a voter’s race or skin color and also required states with histories of entrenched racial barriers to obtain federal approval before altering any election procedures. Though African-Americans already had the constitutional right to vote, the legislation provided the federal enforcement to eliminate legal obstacles thrown up by some states and counties.
"Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color," the president said in . He pledged that with this law, the federal government "will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy."
Since then, U.S. voting rolls have added millions of African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans and others. Americans have voted an increasing number of minorities into public office and have chosen a black man for the nation’s highest elective office – twice. Many states have broadened access to balloting, from improving ease of registration to expanding polling times and absentee voting.
But some observers, particularly Democrats, see a Voting Rights Act under siege.
"Across the country, there is a deliberate, systematic attempt to make it harder and more difficult for the disabled, students, seniors, minorities, poor and rural voters to participate in the democratic process," , a Georgia Democrat who as a young man was wounded in a 1965 march credited with hastening the voting law’s approval. "The burden should not be placed on citizens whose rights are violated to mount their own defense."
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In 2011, "a record number of restrictions were introduced in state legislatures nationwide, including photo ID requirements, cuts to early voting and restrictions to voter registration," according to an . "Many of these states have histories of voter discrimination and are covered under the VRA."
States have been tinkering with their voting laws especially since the drawn-out, narrowly decided presidential race of 2000, said Wendy Underhill, who manages the bipartisan section. "States are the laboratories of democracy" and legitimately can make adjustments, she said, adding that, though states have autonomy, they can't violate federal law.
Attention to those changes heightened in June 2013, when the Supreme Court struck down a key VRA enforcement provision that required nine states with histories of flagrant racial discrimination to get federal approval before changing election procedures. , by a 5-to-4 vote, found that the "preclearance" formula used on these mostly Southern jurisdictions was outdated.
"Our country has changed," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote on behalf of the majority, "and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions."
Leo Smith, the Georgia GOP's director of minority engagement, applauds the decision for ending what he considers to be unfair, unevenly applied oversight.
"Supporting the removal of restrictive laws is a freeing and liberating thing and we can only be benefited by that," he told VOA in June.
A month after the ruling, North Carolina – formerly subjected to preclearance – enacted a combination of new rules that rolled back efforts to make voting more accessible and convenient.
House Bill 589 ended same-day voter registration, stopped preregistering 16- and 17-year-olds, and cut back early voting from 17 days to 10. That last measure eliminated voting on the final Sunday before the Tuesday election, a day often used by Democrats for "souls to the polls" voting drives in black churches.
The U.S. Justice Department and several civil rights groups challenged the new election law, with their respective lawsuits combined in a federal case heard in July in the former tobacco town of Winston-Salem. They said the Republican-sponsored legislation meant to deliberately disenfranchise many black, Hispanic and young voters, who tend to vote for Democrats.
But that there was no discriminatory intent and that the voter turnout rate of African-Americans actually had increased in the 2014 midterms, after the new rules were in place, over 2010.