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33 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. Inter Alia [1] (2015)

handle is hein.journals/interal33 and id is 1 raw text is: YALE LAW & POLICY REVIEW The Voting Rights Umbrella William Jefferson Clinton* The right to vote is both fundamental to individual liberty and to the proper functioning of representative democracy. When voting rights are denied, dilut- ed, or restricted, the ability of government to respond to our challenges and in- crease our opportunities is impaired, and its legitimacy in doing so is dimin- ished. A major theme of American history is the steady expansion of the right to vote. Once restricted to white male property owners, the franchise has been ex- tended to include all citizens from their eighteenth birthday on. Fifty years ago, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 sought to end practices like literacy tests that made it more difficult for African Americans to vote. The Voting Rights Act was the result of years of struggle, paid for with the blood, sweat, and tears of Americans black and white, young and old. It was made possible by people like John Lewis, who absorbed blow after blow on Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge, and by the elected officials led by President Johnson willing to enact laws allowing us to live up to our founding principles. The Voting Rights Act was designed to ensure that everyone's right to vote was protected in reality and not just in theory, by eliminating the obstacles to voting that existed in 1965, and by preventing future, yet to be devised mecha- nisms to restrict the vote. The Act sought to accomplish these objectives through two major provisions: Section 2 prohibited any unfair voting practice that would prevent a person from exercising his or her right to vote based on race; and Section 5 required certain specially covered jurisdictions with a histo- ry of discrimination, determined by a formula in Section 4(b), to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any voting changes. Its effects were immediate. By removing exclusionary tactics like literacy tests, and providing federal examiners and observers to monitor registration and elections, the number of African Americans registered to vote rose dramatically across the South. By 1968, the percentage of registered African Americans in Mississippi had increased from 6.7 to 59.8; in Alabama from 19.3 to 51.6; and * William Jefferson Clinton is the 42nd President of the United States.

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