- Click here for the text.
The intro:
No person acting under color of law shall--
"(A) in determining whether any individual is qualified under State law or laws to vote in any Federal election, apply any standard, practice, or procedure different from the standards, practices, or procedures applied under such law or laws to other individuals within the same county, parish, or similar political subdivision who have been found by State officials to be qualified to vote;
"(B) deny the right of any individual to vote in any Federal election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting, if such error or omission is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under State law to vote in such election; or
"(C) employ any literacy test as a qualification for voting in any Federal election unless (i) such test is administered to each individual and is conducted wholly in writing, and (ii) a certified copy of the test and of the answers given by the individual is furnished to him within twenty-five days of the submission of his request made within the period of time during which records and papers are required to be retained and preserved pursuant to title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960
- Congressional Research Service.
Title I19 of the 1964 Act amended voting provisions of an earlier statute, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (1957 Civil Rights Act),20 to address “problems encountered in the operation and enforcement” of these earlier provisions.21 Title I was not the first time Congress amended the 1957 Civil Rights Act—it had previously done so through the Civil Rights Act of 1960.22 These earlier legislative efforts, however, had failed to effectively “counteract state and local government tactics of using, among other things, burdensome registration requirements to disenfranchise African–Americans.”23 Title I thus amended the 1957 Act to “outlaw[] some of the tactics used to disqualify Negroes from voting.”24 The voting provisions of Title I and the 1957 Civil Rights Act are distinct from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA),25 and generally lesser known—a circumstance that some scholars have attributed to the effectiveness of the VRA, which was enacted just a year after Title I.26
Provisions of Title I, however, continue to be litigated, including in recent years to challenge state voter registration practices.27 As discussed below, Title I added provisions28 prohibiting (1) the use of different standards for qualifying voters;29 (2) certain uses of literacy or “interpretation” tests;30 and (3) the denial of the right to vote based on immaterial errors in a registration or other voting document.31 In addition, to “help meet the problem of lengthy and often unwarranted delays,”32 Title I of the 1964 Act further amended the 1957 Civil Rights Act to expedite judicial review of voting cases.33 Legislative history reflects two constitutional bases for enacting Title I: Congress’s power to enforce the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution.34
Relatedly, the Supreme Court has construed the voting provisions of the 1957 Civil Rights Act as an exercise of Congress’s authority under the Fifteenth Amendment.
- Wikipedia.
This title barred unequal application of voter registration requirements. Title I did not eliminate literacy tests, which acted as one barrier for black voters, other racial minorities, and poor whites in the South or address economic retaliation, police repression, or physical violence against nonwhite voters. While the Act did require that voting rules and procedures be applied equally to all races, it did not abolish the concept of voter "qualification". It accepted the idea that citizens do not have an automatic right to vote but would have to meet standards beyond citizenship.
- Library of Congress.
- Title I of the Civil Rights Act in Contemporary Voting Rights Litigation.
