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Voting rights


The most famous piece of civil liberties legislation on voting rights is the US Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was passed because of congressional impatience with the progress of this aspect of the broader Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Voting Rights Act banned various forms of de facto discriminatory voting legislation in the states, such as literacy tests, which were in practice used to keep blacks off the voting register. It also banned the withholding of the right to vote as a result of failure to pay poll taxes, which had a clear discriminatory effect, and was made fully unconstitutional in the 24th Amendment. Prior to this Act the vast majority of blacks were prevented from voting throughout the traditional deep South of the USA, helping to ensure a racially-biased congressional bloc in Washington. The other major case of racial discrimination

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