Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/660

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502

PRESLEY v. ETOWAH COUNTY COMM’N Opinion of the Court

through any of the mechanisms described in the statute. Those mechanisms are any “qualification or prerequisite” or any “standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting.” The principle that § 5 covers voting changes over a wide range is well illustrated by the separate cases we considered in the single opinion for the Court in Allen. Allen involved four cases. The eponymous Allen v. State Bd. of Elections concerned a change in the procedures for the casting of write-in ballots. 393 U. S., at 570–571. In Whitley v. Williams, there were changes in the requirements for independent candidates running in general elections. Id., at 551. The challenged procedure in Fairley v. Patterson resulted in a change from single-district voting to at-large voting. Id., at 550. The remaining case, Bunton v. Patterson, involved a statute which provided that officials who in previous years had been elected would be appointed. Id., at 550–551. We held that the changes in each of the four cases were covered by § 5. Our cases since Allen reveal a consistent requirement that changes subject to § 5 pertain only to voting. Without implying that the four typologies exhaust the statute’s coverage, we can say these later cases fall within one of the four factual contexts presented in the Allen cases. First, we have held that § 5 applies to cases like Allen v. State Bd. of Elections itself, in which the changes involved the manner of voting. See Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U. S. 379, 387 (1971) (location of polling places). Second, we have held that § 5 applies to cases like Whitley v. Williams, which involve candidacy requirements and qualifications. See NAACP v. Hampton County Election Comm’n, 470 U. S. 166 (1985) (change in filing deadline); Hadnott v. Amos, 394 U. S. 358 (1969) (same); Dougherty County Bd. of Ed. v. White, 439 U. S. 32 (1978) (rule requiring board of education members to take unpaid leave of absence while campaigning for office). Third, we have applied § 5 to cases like Fairley v. Patterson,