The argument that the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 was never intended to regulate redistricting rests on the specific legal definitions and administrative focus of the original text. At its core, the Act was a procedural remedy designed to secure the "franchise" — the individual's ability to access a ballot — rather than a mandate to manage the geographic outcomes of elections.

The language of the 1965 Act focused heavily on "qualifications" and "prerequisites." These terms historically addressed the hurdles placed between a citizen and the ballot box, such as literacy tests and poll taxes. Section 4 explicitly defined "tests or devices" in ways that targeted registration of office conduct, not legislative cartography.

Because the Act sought to eliminate these specific barriers, its primary mechanism was the protection of the individual voter’s right to register and cast a vote, a "ballot-centric" scope that remains distinct from the "vote dilution" theories later applied to redistricting.

Furthermore, the expansion of the VRA into the realm of district lines was a judicial development, not a legislative one. It was not until the 1969 Allen v. State Board of Elections decision that the Supreme Court broadened "voting procedures" to include electoral structures.

Even when Congress amended the Act in 1982, it included a proviso explicitly stating that no group had a right to proportional representation. This suggests a lingering legislative intent to protect the process of voting rather than guaranteeing specific geographic or demographic results through the redrawing of lines. 

“Federal courts should largely stop intervening in redistricting.” — Justice Thomas    

Daniel Benson lives in Rockland