Echoing the language of the 15th Amendment, the Act prohibits states 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. Specifically, Congress intended the Act to outlaw the practice of requiring otherwise qualified voters to pass literacy tests in order to register to vote, a principal means by which Southern states had prevented African-Americans from exercising the franchise. The Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, 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 with a history of discriminatory voting practices (so-called "covered jurisdictions") could not implement any change affecting voting without first obtaining the approval of the Department of Justice, 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.
The Act is widely considered a landmark in civil-rights legislation, though some of its provisions have sparked political controversy. During the debate over the 2006 extension, some Republican members of Congress objected to renewing the preclearance requirement (the Act's primary enforcement provision), arguing that it represents an overreach of federal power and places unwarranted bureaucratic demands on Southern states that have long since abandoned the discriminatory practices the Act was meant to eradicate.Conservative legislators also opposed requiring states with large Spanish-speaking populations to provide bilingual ballots. Congress nonetheless voted to extend the Act for twenty-five years with its original enforcement provisions left intact.
Some who think that this federal oversight is discriminatory to these particular states have proposed that the oversight be extended to all 50 states or eliminated entirely.
The 2006 extension of the preclearance procedure was challenged in a lawsuit, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, which was argued before the Supreme Court on April 30, 2009. The lawsuit was brought by a municipal water district in Texas, which elects members to a water board. The district does not register voters, nor has it been accused of discrimination. However, it wished to move the voting location from a private home to a public school; the preclearance procedure required it to seek approval from the Justice Department, because Texas is a covered jurisdiction under Section 5. While the Court did not declare preclearance unconstitutional, the decision redefined the law to allow any political subdivision covered by Section 5 to request exemption from federal review.
During the 2010 election cycle, the state of Florida passed two redistricting amendments to their state constitution that were aimed at preventing future attempts at gerrymandering. Then-governor Charlie Crist, a supporter of both amendments, submitted a request to the DOJ for preclearance, as required by the VRA. In early 2011, Florida's newly-elected governor Rick Scott, a vocal opponent of these amendments, withdrew the request for preclearance, placing the legal status of the amendments in limbo. In particular, only four of Florida's counties are required to obtain preclearance under the Act, making it unclear what the status of these amendments is in the remaining counties. Proponents of these amendments, both of which passed with greater than 60% voter approval, are accusing Scott's administration of attempting to "thwart the will of the voters", by "abusing their power", and the VRA's preclearance clause, as a means to defeat these amendments despite overwhelming voter support.
The Act requires municipalities that receive requests for ballots in other languages to comply with the request. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) of California said of the Act, "What unites us? It's our language, the English language," and that the Act is "hurting America by making it easier not to learn English.
Some judges and proponents of racially drawn congressional districts have interpreted Section 5 of the Act as requiring racial gerrymandering in order to ensure minority representation. The United States Supreme Court in Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900 (1995), overturned a 1992 Congressional redistricting plan which had created minority majority districts in Georgia as unconstitutional gerrymander. In Bush v. Vera, the Supreme Court, in a plurality opinion, rejected Texas's contention that Section 5 required racially-gerrymandered districts.
While the title of the Voting Rights Act might imply that it established an explicit right to vote for U.S. citizens to vote in presidential elections, there is no such federal right. In a Per curiam opinion regarding Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), the Supreme Court noted that, "The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States," a logical conclusion given the history of the Electoral College. Although the Voting Rights Act and three constitutional amendments that prevent discrimination in granting the franchise have established in Supreme Court jurisprudence that there is a "fundamental right" in the franchise, voting remains a privilege that states grant, and over which states are given considerable leeway.
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