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Discriminatory Voting In The United States

1023 Words5 Pages

With the 2016 election quickly approaching, voting is important. Especially, when you have someone like Donald Trump running for President. New voting laws are being presented which may cause controversy for voters, predominately minorities. Until the case of Shelby County v. Holder, it was much easier to block discriminatory voting laws. Most Southern states, with a history of passing discriminatory laws, were required to get preclearance (known as Section 5 under the Voting Rights Act) from the Justice Department before making any voting changes (Rosenthal, 2016). But in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, five Supreme Court justices disabled that requirement (Rosenthal, 2016). Since section 5 have been axed out, some states have rushed …show more content…

Discrimination in voting, is not just limited to the southern states. Lawmakers in Ohio and Wisconsin, for example, have gone to great lengths to complicate voting for minorities (Rosenthal, 2016). It did not take long for these ridiculous laws to be passed. Some agree that having section 5 in the voting rights act is unconstitutional. Preclearance was a constitutional response to voter discrimination, but it was also unconstitutional to apply it to states based on past issues (Sensenbrenner, 2016). Thus, the law’s strongest protections have been rendered meaningless. Clearly they never heard of Tocqueville’s tyranny of the majority. The tyranny of the majority is when a dominant group uses its control of the government to abuse the rights of minority groups (Magstadt, p.78, 2015). Executing laws that place restrictions on minorities sounds all too familiar. Do some just turn a blind eye to what is written in our constitution? Not only is that written, but so is John Locke’s rule of law, or did we forget. The rule of law was written so that the power and discretion of government and its officials are restrained by a supreme set of neutral rules that prevent arbitrary and unfair action by the government (Magstadt, p.79, 2105). Unless there is a loophole within our governmental system, how can 5 Supreme Court justices make a decision to renounce section 5 of the Voting Rights Act? It is obvious that it is needed. We need it to keep certain states from discriminating against minorities. Again, it makes me question our government’s motives. It’s like smacking our equal protection rights in the face and saying here take this. With the 2016 election approaching quickly, we need as many votes as possible to keep people like trump from being

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When people think of how government works, unless they’ve taken a government class, they usually think of Congress making laws and the President doing pretty much everything else. No one pays much attention to the Supreme Court unless there is a landmark case or something else to grab the news — like the recent death of Justice Antonin Scalia. But the Supreme Court does much more than you’d think regarding keeping the political machine running like a well-oiled … machine. Through not only interpretation of the law, but also judicial activism, the Supreme Court shows it can have as much influence over the laws of the land as either of the other branches of the federal government. In this paper, I will analyze the decision-making methods of the Court using the cases of Gideon v. Wainwright and Betts v. Brady.

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Constitution place on state’s power to determine voter qualifications? Those limitations start with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This act prohibits racial discrimination when voting in the local, state, and federal levels. “Section 2, which closely followed the language of the 15th amendment, applied a nationwide prohibition of the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color” (ourdocuments.gov). Not since the reconstruction period after the civil war had there been such a “significant statutory change in the relationship between the Federal and state governments” (ourdocuments.gov).

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It also states that assistance should be provided to those who are disabled. In many southern states, the local government would administer literacy test as a barrier for individuals trying to register to vote. These tests were created with the intention of disenfranchising blacks. Without the right to vote, they could not cast their voice for individuals who would change legislation.

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We see multiple successes of voting equality attempted through amendments, however, the Supreme Court’s decision on Shelby County v. Holder has pushed back years and years of effort for voting rights. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling was in Shelby County’s favor, stating that the Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional along with Section 5. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr, who wrote the majority’s opinion, said that the power to regulate election was reserved to the states, not the federal government. As a result to the court’s decision, the federal government can no longer determine which voting law discriminates and can be passed. After the case, many states had freely passed new voting laws; the most common voting law states passed

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President Johnson was a supporter of state rights so he was not going to say or do anything. To him, the power to decide what to do with the newly free African-American was in the hands of the states. But when the Congress had a majority of Republicans after the election, it decided to overrule the southern states and with that, the period called Radical Reconstruction began. First, there was the Civil Rights Act in 1866, passed despite Johnson 's veto. There was no doubt anymore that freedmen were citizens and were to be treated as such. "

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To accomplish social equality and justice has been a long controversial issue in U.S. history. Voting Rights Act of 1965 should be understood as a tremendous accomplishment today because it not only represent a symbol of the triumph of fighting social injustice, but also open the first gate for African American and minority to strive for more political power in order to create a “great society.”

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If the federal government was not able to fully enforce this law, the states would likely find a loophole of some sort in the law, and we would not have the voting rights we cherish today. This actually happens more often than you would think! When some states from around the country such as Alabama, Virginia, and Texas established poll taxes, which made it so that you must prove you payed the tax before you can vote, they where indirectly discriminating against people of color (Document D). Although they did not directly say it, they knew what they were

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The 15th Amendment (Amendment XV), which gave African-American men the right to vote, was inserted into the U.S. Constitution on March 30, 1870. Passed by Congress the year before, the amendment says, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Although the amendment was passed in the late 1870s, many racist practices were used to oppose African-Americans from voting, especially in the Southern States like Georgia and Alabama. After many years of racism, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 aimed to overthrow legal barricades at the state and local levels that deny African-Americans their right to vote. In the

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Further, our government is extremely divided, and has been for many decades, thus making it harder for them to make new laws or initiate the amendment process. It doesn’t entirely matter if the Supreme Court is/isn’t directly tied to the public, they make a ruling and it impacts the minorities, regardless. An analogous example exhibiting the same faulty reasoning would be saying that when someone mows their lawn, the lawn mower does all the work and the individual has no impact on the grass being cut when surely he/she does. Similarly, it would be incorrect to

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XV, § 2. The VRA is the exercise of that power. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965 to affirm the fundamental rights of each citizen to participate in elections. The current version of Section 2 of the VRA provides:

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What happened in Oklahoma? On Sunday 7, 1934 5:04p.m. Oklahoma was hit by a terrible dust storm at the farm. Billie Jo stated,”We just felt wind

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Whilst the election, around 1866, numerous white individuals and white groups like the Ku Klux Klan, thought that African Americans were not adequate to vote, and if they could they believed that they had to vote for anybody but the Republican party. For example, “ ‘I will not tell a lie … If there was an election tomorrow, I would vote the radical ticket.’ They set in and whipped me a thousand licks more.” The discrimination was sprung into action because the rights of African American individuals offended people, and caused others to conceal themselves, and were frightened to go and do things on their own, because of groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

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But, when these officials were elected to Congress, they passed the “black codes” and thus the relations between the president and legislators became worst (Schriefer, Sivell and Arch R1). These so called “Black Codes” were “a series of laws to deprive blacks of their constitutional rights” that they were enacted mainly by Deep South legislatures. Black Codes differ from a state to another but they were stricter in the Deep South as they were sometimes irrationally austere. (Hazen 30) Furthermore, with the emergence of organizations such as the Red Shirts and the White League with the rise of the Conservative White Democrats’ power, efforts to prevent Black Americans from voting were escalating (Watts 247), even if the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S constitution that gave the Blacks the right to vote had been ratified in 1870.

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Although technically people of color had the right, white people were making it very difficult to register. When African Americans went to register they would be tested continuously, something white people never had to deal with. Only two percent of African Americans in the south could vote. Before the march from Selma to Montgomery there were many protests to try to gain fair voting rights. One man, Jimmie Lee Jackson was killed at a peaceful protest by a state trooper.

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However, until today, African Americans still couldn’t get their real voting rights. This act doesn’t totally infer this situation, no matter how industrious blacks demand their completed fundamental rights. Except African American, within the United States, many minorities have struggled for their rights for many years. It is necessary for a government to protect all citizens’ rights, including the minorities. If the government couldn’t do that, as a citizen, we should speak out our perspectives by participating in the voting

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