Authors

Jamelia Morgan

Document Type

Article

Disciplines

Civil Rights and Discrimination | Election Law

Abstract

As this article will show, the reluctance of courts to accept evidence of "impact plus" stems in part from a concern that the remedies required by impact-based claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act will involve essentialism and an affront to individual dignity. These concerns are animated in the vote dilution context where, in cases challenging the dilution of the minority vote, and not involving intentional vote dilution, objections have centered on the notion that Section 2's results test requires courts to make essentialist claims regarding minority and non-minority voting patterns and election choices. Such objections are misplaced in the vote denial context, however, and as will be demonstrated below, the spillover effects from the consternation over impact-based vote dilution in the vote denial context have impeded the ability of plaintiffs to prevail on these challenges in court.

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