"[The] right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless."

President Lyndon Johnson said these words moments before he signed the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 to ensure that the "right" he referred to would be a reality for everyone.

The VRA enforces the Fifteenth Amendment's guarantee of the right to vote, in response to widespread racial disenfranchisement in the United States. It includes many enforcement mechanisms, ranging from literacy test bans to federal invalidation of disenfranchising state policies.

Now, in 2013, this law has arrived before the United States Supreme Court, and the right that it has protected for decades is at stake.

Last week, the Court heard arguments in Shelby County, Ala. v. Holder. Shelby County questions the constitutionality of the VRA's powerful fifth section, which mandates that places with a history of racial discrimination receive approval from the Attorney General or the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C. for changes made to their election laws. It also empowers these authorities to reject laws with intentions or effects of preventing or diluting the minority vote.

Shelby County contends that Section 5 is now unnecessary, and its continued implementation violates the Tenth Amendment state rights. I, however, believe that if voting is to remain a guaranteed right, the VRA needs to be preserved as is.

Many of the jurisdictions covered under Section 5 include states like Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, which were once infamous for their discriminatory Jim Crow policies. Section 5 continues to ensure that such states do not retrogress and enact laws, such as redistricting orders or voting procedures, that either prevent minorities from voting or weaken their voting power.

Although the Tenth Amendment permits states to run their daily affairs, the Constitution still entrusts the basic protection of voting rights to Congress under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which were ratified to supplement earlier amendments.

Even if Shelby County asserts that it can implement fair election laws by itself, striking Section 5 would almost certainly invalidate it nationwide, which can harm voting rights elsewhere. Furthermore, once states enact discriminatory laws, they can be difficult to repeal, as the victims would be denied the most basic repeal mechanism: voting. Despite assertions that Section 5 is now unconstitutionally excessive, the voting policies that some states have proposed, such as unforgivably strict identification laws that target minority populations, prove that America is far from the time when we can do without it.

While federal law has outlawed de jure racial discrimination, it did not eliminate the more subtle practices that can still deny voting rights. Several states, under the pretense of preventing voter fraud, have passed stricter photo identification laws, barring voters without acceptable identification from casting valid ballots. These laws overwhelmingly affect minority voters. Many states require basic voter identification. However, such identification, which has included utility bills, bank statements and paychecks, are usually more accessible and affordable than the strict identification some states mandate. The costs of such photo identification, from obtaining the resources to prove citizenship, to paying the application fees, are high for poor minority families. Therefore, such laws have the principal effect of preventing minority votes in large numbers.

Section 5 has helped prevent such problems. Texas, for instance, passed a stricter law in 2011, mandating that voters would need strict photo identification to vote. Under this law, acceptable identification would be restricted to driver licenses, passports and other official government-issued photo documentation. The costs of such documentation are extremely unforgiving on poor voters. A first-time passport card applicant would have to pay $55 alone in fees. A Texas driver license would cost $25.

Texas' law provides free "electronic identification certificates" for voters. Even so, the transaction costs can be huge, as applicants must still personally procure citizenship documentation, which can cost at least $22. For many of Texas' African American and Latino voters, who overwhelmingly make up the poor population of the state, this price is unaffordable, especially for voters living on minimum-wage and poverty-line incomes.

Texas also rejected an amendment allowing voters to procure those application documents free of charge, so the law truly disenfranchises them.

Thankfully, after Section 5's pre-clearance, both the Attorney General and the district court rejected this law because it disproportionately disenfranchised minority communities, especially since it did not accommodate their economic status. Texas tried to make the requirement look fair, but its refusal to account for the indirect effects, knowing they would hit minorities the hardest, still made the law nothing more than a poll tax, as the Attorney General described it.

Alabama has also proposed a similar law to take effect in 2014. It has yet to receive federal pre-clearance, but if it is like Texas' law, it would just as brutally disenfranchise Alabama's minority voters. In light of this possibility, Shelby County's assertion that Section 5 is unnecessary is preposterous and foolhardy.

The problems that Section 5 intended to resolve have yet to fully disappear. With such problems still haunting elections, invalidating Section 5 would be disastrous for minority voters.

During oral argument, Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative who will likely vote to strike down Section 5, called the VRA a "racial entitlement." Sadly, he misses the point of the law.
Lyndon Johnson did not sign this law so that minorities could receive a racial right, he signed it so that they could receive an American right.
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