The famous Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted as a natural consequence to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The credit of this success was mostly given to the efforts of Martin Luther King. He worked for myriad issues faced by the Afro-Americans in the country and one of the issues was the “right to vote”. An outbreak of violence in the South was witnessed after passing of the Civil Rights Act as the (white) Americans did not approve of Afro-Americans to be registered for voting.

With this scenario at hand, Voting Rights Act (access the full text of the Act on:http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/usccr/documents/cr11032.pdf) was proposed. The purpose was to regulate the racial disparity and protection of minority interest by securing a right to vote for all. As per the Act, criteria to determine the capacity to vote were not pertaining to literacy or poll taxes but only to American citizenship and registration for electoral list.

Almost thirty states in the United States of America have enacted rules pertaining to Voter Identification. At the time of voting it has been mandated to produce an identification proof provided by the state with a photograph and other details of the individual. There are many on-going cases which challenge the standing of Voter Id Act when pitted against section-5 of the Voting Rights Act.

As per information given in  Melanie Eversley’s article for USA TODAY on 18th May 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. answered the question of constitutionality of certain sections of Voting Rights Act (read the whole article on: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/05/court-upholds-constitutionality-of-voting-rights-act/1#.UBBVpqPlVdg). The constitutionality of the Act was upheld as the Shelby County failed to bring forth the non-discriminating nature of their voter Id Act. Debo Adegbile, interim president of the NAACP LDF said, "Some have questioned whether the protection is still needed. The recent efforts to suppress minority voters make it crystal clear that we still need this core voter protection."

Many other cases like- Texas v. Holder, Holder v. Pennsylvania, etc. are being fought on the very same lines. Voter’s identification might seem a very uncomplicated matter for many of us but there are many more people who cannot get through to qualify for a voter Id. As per the voting rights Act every American citizen enrolled in the electoral list is eligible to vote whilst this right is being conveniently taken away by enacting another contradictory law. Till now the courts have been persistently upholding the constitutionality of the Act and to secure the intentions of legislators of the 1965 Act it is pertinent that this trend continues.