Voting Rights Act Argumentative Essay

According to Voter Institute, Americans are more likely to be struck by lightning than to fall victim to voter fraud. However, states consistently cite this problem to justify strict voter identification laws, a popular form of voter discrimination today. It is for this reason that the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965 to prevent the disenfranchisement of minority voters. However, in June 2013, the Supreme Court case, Shelby County v. Holder, deemed Section 4(b) of the act, the list of states subjected to preclearance, unconstitutional. Critics argue that the Section 4 states no longer displayed the same amount of blatant discrimination compared to the past rates which had warranted the burdens of preclearance. No longer subject to preclearance,

This is because Section 2 lawsuits come after-the-fact, meaning that they can only take down laws after the discrimination has taken place. This is morally problematic, but the discriminatory laws are happening at such a high rate at the local and unapparent forms that it is impossible to keep up with all the last minute changes in thousands of jurisdictions, which is why Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Legal Defense Fund, argued that “the reality is without [preclearance]…no civil rights organization [can] keep up with all the minute changes that could happen in thousands of jurisdictions throughout this country.” Although Section 4 states are largely the same states participating in discrimination, state evidence demonstrates that the five worst uncovered jurisdictions are worse than eight of the Section 4 jurisdictions. In other words, Section 4 unfairly applies a blanket formula to states that are while ignoring much of the discrimination outside of Section 4 jurisdiction. Ultimately, this is why I recommend for an updated formula to be rewritten