President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Martin Luther King, Jr. after signing the Voting Rights Act, August 6, 1965.

President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Martin Luther King, Jr. after signing the Voting Rights Act, August 6, 1965.

To commemorate the 49th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and the one year mark following the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision to gut a vital protection of the Voting Rights Act, the National Commission on Voting Rights released a new report, "Protecting Minority Voters: Our Work is Not Done." The report "challenges the Court’s rationale that improvements in minority citizens’ rates of voting and voter registration and the success of minority candidates indicated that the coverage formula protecting minority voters was unconstitutionally outdated."

The full report is worth the read, but their primary conclusions are chilling.



Voting discrimination is a frequent and ongoing problem in the United States. There were about 332 successful voting rights lawsuits and denials of Section 5 preclearance by the U.S. Department of Justice and another ten non-litigation settlements.

There were about 332 successful voting rights lawsuits and denials of Section 5 preclearance by the U.S. Department of Justice and another ten non-litigation settlements. Formerly covered states in the South and Southwest stand out with some of worst records of voting discrimination–with Texas being at the top of the list. Texas stands out as having a remarkably high level of documented voting discrimination, including multiple state-level violations. And the states of Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina were not far behind.

Texas stands out as having a remarkably high level of documented voting discrimination, including multiple state-level violations. And the states of Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina were not far behind. From this report, we can also see that voting discrimination takes a variety of forms. Discriminatory redistricting plans and at-large elections continue to prompt the most successful lawsuits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. However, there were also 48 successful lawsuits and ten non-litigation settlements relating to language translation and assistance.

Yes, we knew much of this already from observing the last 15 years of concerted voter suppression efforts. But these reports are important for documenting the specific instances and building up the case for more voting rights reform when we've got a functioning Congress again.

Meanwhile, a comprehensive investigation of the supposed fraud that most voter ID laws purport to prevent finds just 31 credible claims of fraud out of one billion ballots cast. That's a fraud rate of 0.00002 percent, for those interested in the math. Note as well that each of the 31 cases involved just one or a few people—not the kind of conspiracy and well-organized effort that could actually have an effect on the outcome of an election.

More on the war on voting can be found beneath the orange butterfly ballot.

