Justices Gut Voting Rights Act

            On Tuesday June 25, 2013 a greatly divided Supreme Court got rid of the most powerful section of the Voting Rights Act. The decision deplored by the White House but cheered by mostly southern states that are now free from nearly 50 years of intense federal oversight of their elections. The justices, being split along ideological and partisan lines, votes 5-4 to strip the government of its tool to stop the voting bias- the requirement in the Voting Rights Act that all or parts of 15 states with a history of discrimination in voting, mainly in the South, get Washington’s approval before changing the way they hold elections.
           Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a majority of conservative, Republican-appointed justices, said the law’s provision that determines which states are covered is unconstitutional because it relies on 40-year-old data and does not account for racial progress and other changes in U.S. society. The decision effectively puts an end to the advance approval requirement that has been used to open polling places to minority voters in the nearly half century since it was first enacted in 1965; unless Congress can come up with a new formula that Roberts said meets “current conditions” in the United States. (Which is unlikely to happen anytime soon.)
            The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that prohibits discrimination in voting. Echoing the language of the 15th Amendment, the Act prohibits states and local governments from imposing any "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color." The Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had earlier signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. The Act established extensive federal oversight of elections administration, providing that states and local governments with a history of discriminatory voting practices could not implement any change affecting voting without first obtaining the approval of the United States Attorney General or a three-judge panel of the District Court for D.C., a process known as preclearance. These enforcement provisions applied to states and political subdivisions (mostly in the South) that had used a "device" to limit voting and in which less than 50 percent of the population was registered to vote in 1964. The Act has been renewed and amended by Congress four times, the most recent being a 25-year extension signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2006.