US Voting Rights Act
Signed by Lyndon Johnson five months after the Selma march. Banned literacy tests and poll taxes. Required federal oversight of voter registration in jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination. Black voter registration in the Deep South roughly doubled within two years.
The Act's 'preclearance' provision (Section 5) was gutted by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder (2013). Within hours of the ruling, several covered states announced new voter ID requirements that had been blocked for decades. The fight over effective franchise continues.
04 · The Ballot
Consent in principle is meaningless without a mechanism. The 19th and early 20th centuries were the long, contested project of actually counting that consent — extending the vote from property-owning men to working men, to women, to racial minorities. It is a project that is, in many places, still unfinished.
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