CRS Report R47520. The Voting Rights Act: Historical Development and Policy Background, June 2, 2026. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) is one of the most significant elections statutes ever enacted. The law prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or language-minority status in registration and voting nationwide. The VRA also provides protections for blind, disabled, or illiterate voters. Congress designed the VRA to remedy and prevent pervasive racial discrimination in registration and voting, especially in southern states, which continued for a century after the Civil War ended. Although Reconstruction of the South enfranchised many African American men, the federal government’s practical role in protecting minority voting rights in the South was substantially limited between the end of Reconstruction, after the 1876 presidential election, and congressional passage of the VRA in 1965. Discrimination in voting and elections remained entrenched throughout much of the nation into the 1960s, when congressional momentum toward the VRA coincided with other civil rights efforts and increased media attention to the subject. This historical background is invariably part of the congressional context surrounding the VRA. After passing the VRA in 1965, Congress amended the law in 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and 2006. On these occasions, the House and Senate agreed that unique federal action was necessary to protect voting rights for racial minorities and members of certain language-minority groups. Despite that general consensus, congressional sentiment about how or whether to address voting rights through the VRA was not always unanimous. The legislative record reveals generally consistent support for equality in voting rights, and also passionate debate about the proper roles of the federal government and the states in achieving that equality and administering federal elections….This report provides an overview of the complex political history that led to the VRA, and of more than 60 years of legislative history surrounding the statute’s enactment, major amendments, and related developments. Understanding the policy challenges that Congress faced as it developed the VRA and the statutory provisions it agreed upon to address those challenges could help provide a foundation for future congressional consideration of policy options, regardless of whether or how the House and Senate decide to proceed.