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“One order of business is for our Congress to pass an updated version of the Voting Rights Act that would correct some of the problems that have arisen”. We received more than 100 calls from over 30 states. “If you poll the average American they’ll say...

As Rutenberg chronicles, from the moment the ink was dry on the Voting Rights Act, there has been a concentrated effort to undermine this historic law and turn back the clock on its progress. “Too often, they are rooted in that history”, he wrote. “They remind...

August 6th 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law giving Black Americans the right to vote.

Federal appeals court Wednesday struck down Texas’ voter ID law, saying it was discriminatory.

He discussed the law at a national teleconference with Representative John Lewis of Georgia and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, both voting rights advocates.

Considered as among the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. History, the VRA aimed to overcome legal barriers at state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment.

Congress should honor the original intent of the Voting Rights Act by passing several bills that have been introduced to re-establish the federal oversight authority that had been struck by the court.

However, the decision was not an outright victory for supporters of the Voting Rights Act, as the court sent the law back to a lower court to be amended.

Meanwhile, the best way for citizens to observe the anniversary is to do what the law made possible for everyone – register and vote.

But, because it was so close to the November elections, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that elections could go forward with the law in effect.

Kaine. “Two years after the Supreme Court removed crucial provisions of this law, there is a disturbing trend in many states to shrink access to the ballot box, threatening the right of many Americans to participate in elections”.

The decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit pertained to one of a series of laws enacted in Republican-governed states requiring potential voters to show identification that Democrats saw as intended to disenfranchise minorities who typically support their party.

On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act, which has been called the single most effective civil rights law ever passed by Congress.