ABSTRACT
In a review of voting rights litigation in the mid-1990s, Averill noted, “In the generations since our nation’s birth, courts and legislative bodies have labored to define the right to vote and divine what that right requires in the treatment of the individual citizen”. Numerous scholars have chronicled the gradual, highly contentious expansion and the occasional contraction of voting rights. Justice Douglas echoed Holmes’ language and extended his Saylor dissent by developing a dissociative argument more clearly in his dissent in South v.Peters, a case involving a challenge to Georgia’s “county unit” voting system. Like Black, Douglas believed the court should specify the equal protection clause in a way that guaranteed voting equality, but his dissociative argument foregrounded the “appearance” end of the dissociative spectrum. As African Americans began registering and voting in greater numbers, cities, counties, and states began adopting new electoral practices, “at large” voting systems being one of the most common.
