Legal Definitions - Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act (VRA) is a federal civil rights law that protects minorities from discriminatory voting practices. It was initially created to protect racial minorities, but in 1975, it was extended to protect members of language minorities, including voters who speak Spanish, Native American languages, Alaskan Native languages, and Asian languages.

The VRA prevents voting discrimination in several ways. It prohibits literacy tests or similar “tests or devices” as a prerequisite to voter registration, and requires jurisdictions with significant language minority populations to provide non-English ballots and oral voting instructions. The act also protects minorities from vote dilution. In areas with particularly bad discrimination problems, the act authorized federal examiners to directly register voters and observe polling places. Finally, it requires areas with a history of voting discrimination to “preclear” changes to their voting laws.

For example, if a state wanted to change its voting laws, it would have to get approval from the United States Attorney General or a three-judge panel of the District Court of the District of Columbia to ensure that the new rules would not violate the VRA.

Another example is that the VRA prohibits drawing election districts in ways that improperly dilute minorities’ voting power. This means that election officials cannot split a single minority community into enough different election districts that even if the community voted as a bloc, it could not influence any single district’s elections. They also cannot dilute a minority community’s voting power by submerging it in a multi-member district with enough non-minority voters to routinely defeat the minority community’s chosen candidates.

The VRA is an important law that protects the voting rights of minorities and ensures that their voices are heard in the democratic process.