“…The Act prohibited jurisdictions from implementing barriers to voting and provided for greater enforcement of the right to vote guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Upon reflection, President Johnson remarked that the VRA was his greatest achievement from an era that produced “one of the most glittering records of legislative accomplishment in history.” The VRA earns a place on David Mayhew's list of “significant” legislation and has also been described as “the most powerful weapon in the civil rights arsenal” (Gerken , 709), which “had fundamental effects on American politics and society” (Rodriguez and Weingast , 1428). As Cox and Miles (, 1) elaborate, “the Voting Rights Act has dramatically reshaped the political landscape of the United States … it has helped substantially expand political opportunities for minority voters and has contributed to the radical realignment of Southern politics.” And in even more lucid terms, Issacharoff (, 95) writes that the VRA “was pivotal in bringing black Americans to the broad currents of political life—a transformation that shook the foundations of Jim Crow, triggered the realignment of partisan politics, and set the foundations for the election of an African American president.” A voluminous empirical literature attributes the VRA with increased rates of Black voter turnout (Filer, Kenney, and Morton ); successful Black candidates elected to municipal office (Sass and Mehay ), state legislatures (Grofman and Handley ), and Congress (Handley, Grofman, and Arden ); and public expenditures in Black communities (Cascio and Washington ; Husted and Kenny ; Keech ).…”