Voting Rights

The basis and foundation of our democratic form of government is the right to vote. Voting is one of the most important tools Americans have to influence the policies the government adopts. Unfortunately, many Americans are effectively denied their right to vote.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.

Since 2008, states across the country have passed measures to make it harder for Americans-particularly black people, the elderly, students, and people with disabilities-to exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot. These measures include voter ID laws, cuts to early voting, and purges of voter rolls.

The issue of voting rights in the United States has been fought for throughout United States history. Eligibility to vote in the United States is established both in the US Constitution and its amendments, and by state law.

Throughout our brief history of just a few centuries, the central conflict in this country has been between those that envision a government determined by and working for all of its people, and those who dream of a country that guarantees the rights of a select few at the expense

The Voting Rights Act is a historic civil rights law that is meant to ensure that the right to vote is not denied on account of race or color. Unless Congress acts quickly, this could be the first election in 50 years without full protection of the right to vote for minority voters.

When the Constitution was written, only white male property owners (about 10 to 16 percent of the nation's population) had the vote. Over the past two centuries, though, the term "government by the people" has become a reality.

Before the Civil War the United States Constitution did not provide specific protections for voting. Qualifications for voting were matters which neither the Constitution nor federal laws governed. At that time, although a few northern states permitted a small number of free black men to register and vote, slavery and restrictive state laws and practices led the franchise to be exercised almost exclusively by white males.

Today, the campaign to restore the VRA is releasing a video highlighting the story of how, before the Supreme Court gutted it, the VRA protected the rights of minority voters when the city of Calera in Shelby County, Alabama, manipulated voting districts in a discriminatory manner to prevent Ernest Montgomery, the sole African American city councilmember, from being re-elected.

Since 1965, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) has protected minority voters at the polls. In June 2013, in a huge blow to democracy, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula used for Section 5 of the VRA, which required jurisdictions with significant histories of voter discrimination to pre-clear any new voting practices or procedures, i.e., get federal approval from the Department of Justice, and show that they do not have a discriminatory purpose or effect.

Or, how the Shelby ruling is like starving a dog to death.