City of Mobile v. Bolden

The American ideal of political equality, conceived in the earliest days of our colonial existence and fostered by the *104egalitarian language of the Declaration of Independence, could not forever tolerate the limitation of the right to vote to white propertied males. Our Constitution has been amended six times in the movement toward a democracy for more than the few,1 and this Court has interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to provide that “a citizen has a constitutionally protected right to participate in elections on an equal basis with other citizens in the jurisdiction,” Dunn v. Blumstein,…