![]() Faced with a choice between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, a few more New Yorkers than before stayed home. But in 1970, the act was amended and the formula changed to include turnout in 1968. Those who wrote the legislation knew which states they wanted to cover, and designed a statistical formula – a literacy test coupled with turnout under 50% in the 1964 presidential election – to single them out. The Deep South, with its appalling history of 15th Amendment violations, was the target of the Voting Rights Act 40 years ago. ![]() Today, African-American votes count in electing both blacks and whites to public office, not only in New York, where blacks have long been political participants, but in rural Southern counties where black exclusion had once been the rule. It’s hard to remember the era of redneck registrars, fraudulent literacy tests, violence, and intimidation at the polls that came to an end in 1965. It will rightly be a day of celebration the statute accomplished what it was beautifully designed to do: ending black disfranchisement in the Jim Crow South. ![]() In a few weeks, the nation will mark the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
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