ABSTRACT
Voting rights activists acknowledged that Reynolds objected to more discriminatory voting changes than any previous assistant attorney general for civil rights. Voting rights activists made much of four instances in which courts later disagreed with Reynolds's decisions. Voting rights activists also criticized Reynolds for questioning the principle that districts must be at least 65 percent black if African-Americans were to have an equal chance to participate in politics and to elect representatives of their choice. The activists also focused on a few instances in which Reynolds overruled staff recommendations and precleared changes that subsequently were struck down by federal courts. In 1982, when Congress renewed the law a third time, it further expanded the concept that the Voting Rights Act prohibited minority vote dilution as well as outright disfranchisement. Voting rights activists again argued that reallocations of decision-making authority were just as unacceptable as gerrymandering boundaries to the disadvantage of blacks/switching elections from a single-member district to an at-large basis.
