What is the Federal Voting Rights Act (VRA)?
[ Quoted from: http://www.civilrights.org/campaigns/vra/learn_more/history.html ] Prior to the Civil War, African Americans were almost totally disenfranchised throughout the states. Latino voters faced similar barriers to voting in Texas and other parts of the Southwest as did Native American and Asian American voters in the West. Even after enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, in 1870, which gave all men, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude the right to vote, many states continued to use various methods to prevent people of color from voting, including literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation, threats, and even violence. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 … prohibits discrimination based on race, and requires certain jurisdictions to provide bilingual assistance to language minority voters. Section 2 of the Act, which bars the use of voting practices or procedures that discriminate against minority voters, has been used successfully to atta
