Home > Voting Rights Act

The VRA was made necessary by the practices of the Democratic Party in the southern states. Although the right to vote is guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment, the Democratic Party argued that Primary elections were an internal party affair, and that the party was a "private club", so that the government had no authority over its criteria for membership and other factors relevant to participating in primary elections.

The campaign to bring about federal intervention to rectify this situation was initiated by Amelia Boynton Robinson, culminating in the Selma to Montgomery marches.

The Act has been renewed several times and remains in force as of 2004: its most used (and most controversial) provision requires that the United States Department of Justice "preclear" any change in a state's voting laws that may have a negative impact on the voting rights of minorities. This in effect gives the executive branch of the federal government a kind of veto power over state legislatures' periodic re-apportionment of legislative districts.