From Ginsburg’s dissent (pdf, scroll down):
All told, between 1982 and 2006, DOJ objections blocked over 700 voting changes based on a determination that the changes were discriminatory…
…On top of that, over the same time period the DOJ and private plaintiffs succeeded in more than 100 actions to enforce the §5 preclearance requirements…
…In addition to blocking proposed voting changes through preclearance, DOJ may request more information from a jurisdiction proposing a change. In turn, the jurisdiction may modify or withdraw the proposed change. The number of such modifications or withdrawals provides an indication of how many discriminatory proposals are deterred without need for formal objection. Congress received evidence that more than 800 proposed changes were altered or withdrawn since the last reauthorization in 1982.
By my back-of-the-napkin calculations, the areas covered under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act were prevented from enacting approximately 1600 discriminatory voting laws in the 24 years between 1982 and the 2006 reauthorization of the Act. That is 67 discriminatory laws proposed per year, every year, for nearly a quarter century.
Under the new understanding of the law, all of those laws would have gone into effect and most likely had an impact on elections before they could be challenged in court, which isn’t good enough.
Congress also received evidence that litigation under §2 of the VRA was an inadequate substitute for preclearance in the covered jurisdictions. Litigation occurs only after the fact, when the illegal voting scheme has already been put in place and individuals have been elected pursuant to it, thereby gaining the advantages of incumbency.
This is the Republicans’ answer to demographic change.
