Louis Menand’s otherwise excellent piece on the history of the Voting Rights Act perpetuates the pervasive myth that the non-Southern jurisdictions covered by Section Five of the Voting Rights Act are “anomalies” (A Critic at Large, July 8th & 15th). Alaska’s inclusion is due not merely to low turnout on account of inclement weather, as Menand suggests, but also to the state’s history of disenfranchising its vast Native American population. Similarly, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx were covered because of a New York State English-language literacy test that disenfranchised tens of thousands of Puerto Rico-born voters in those boroughs prior to the passage of the V.R.A. In the light of the Supreme Court’s recent invalidation of the Section Five coverage formula as well as racially motivated voter-suppression efforts in the 2012 election in Northern states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, it is more important than ever to acknowledge the less horrific but no less real history of voter suppression above the Mason-Dixon line, and to renew efforts to secure voting rights nationwide.
New Orleans, La.