Voting Rights Act of 1975
The Voting Rights Act of 1975 is a significant piece of legislation aimed at addressing ongoing discrimination in the electoral process in the United States. Building upon the original Voting Rights Act of 1965, which sought to eliminate barriers to voting for African Americans, the 1975 amendments expanded protections to include other minority groups, such as Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. This act also addressed language barriers by mandating bilingual ballots in areas where language discrimination was evident.
The new legislation emerged amid ongoing debates about the effectiveness of previous voting rights measures, particularly in light of the persistent disparities in voter registration and representation among minority populations. It extended federal oversight to additional states, ensuring that changes to voting laws would require federal approval to prevent discriminatory practices. The act's passage marked a critical moment in the civil rights movement, as it facilitated a significant increase in minority representation in government. By 1976, the number of African American elected officials in the South had surged from seventy-two in 1965 to nearly two thousand, reflecting the act's profound impact on American democracy.
Voting Rights Act of 1975
Identification Legislation that extended and expanded the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 and 1970
Date Signed on August 6, 1975
This legislation furthered substantially the national effort to improve voter turnout among African Americans and other minority groups.
The Voting Rights Act first became law in 1965 (with an extension adopted in 1970), requiring federal clearance for changes in election laws in seven southern states and some northern counties, as well as a temporary ban on literacy tests for voter qualification. Though there was a significant increase in African American election turnout in many areas of the South after this legislation was passed, a great deal of discrimination remained. The proportion of African Americans eligible to vote and who were registered remained ten percentage points behind white registration. More than one-third of southern counties with majority African American populations did not have a single elected official at any level from the majority group.
Debate on extending the Voting Rights Act began in 1975. Democrats proposed a bill that would extend the act for ten years, as well as expanding its protections, and in June, it easily gained passage, by a vote of 341-70. The Senate passed the bill in July but with an amendment that would cut the extension from ten years to seven. Rather than risk a Senate filibuster on a Conference Report, the Democratic leadership in the House decided to vote on the Senate version, as amended. The House did approve the amended bill on July 28, and President Gerald R. Ford signed the bill on the tenth anniversary of the first Voting Rights Act.
The Voting Rights Act of 1975 was technically a group of amendments to the earlier acts. It extended federal voting protection to all or parts of ten new states not previously covered, including areas in the North and West. After the act of 1970, congressional investigation found that some Latinos and others were being discriminated against because of their inability to read or speak English. Therefore, in those states or in areas in which the federal government had authority, bilingual ballots became a requirement, and the temporary ban on literacy tests was made permanent. This legislation also extended voting protection to Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans, in terms of the requirement for pre-clearance of voting changes. This legislation allowed individuals to sue in federal court to ask that voting registrars be sent to their area.
Impact
The Voting Rights Acts, some of the most effective pieces of civil rights legislation ever enacted, provided the franchise to thousands of minority voters and had a significant impact on southern and national elections. The South had only seventy-two African American elected officials in 1965 but had almost two thousand by 1976.
Bibliography
Davidson, Chandler, and Bernard Grofman. Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-1990. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Thernstrom, Abigail. Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987.
Thompson, Kenneth H. The Voting Rights Act and Black Electoral Participation. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political Studies, 1982.