Legislative Politics and the Politics of Legislatures

Abstract

Abstract

This essay addresses the thorny politics of enacting voting rights policy in legislatures. Electoral survival is a key concern of legislators, so election reforms set high stakes when their likely results are well known to those who must enact them. The challenges to organize legislative majorities are therefore heightened in this context. To illustrate the point, the Article reviews the chain of events leading to the various enactments of the Voting Rights Act starting in 1965. President Johnson completed a radical and swift change in the electoral system for the entire country, particularly in the Southern States. Key to his original success (and later enactments of the law) was his awareness of and responsiveness to the multiple electoral concerns in Congress. I argue that the law's passage must be viewed as the product of satisfying the electoral incentives of legislators. The statute's contours (specifically what it addresses and what it does not) are explainable at least in part by the compromises and bargains needed for the proponents to achieve a legislative majority.