Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/662

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

sioner has less individual power than before the resolution. A citizen casting a ballot for a commissioner today votes for an individual with less authority than before the resolution, and so, it is said, the value of the vote has been diminished. Were we to accept appellants’ proffered reading of § 5, we would work an unconstrained expansion of its coverage. Innumerable state and local enactments having nothing to do with voting affect the power of elected officials. When a state or local body adopts a new governmental program or modifies an existing one it will often be the case that it changes the powers of elected officials. So too, when a state or local body alters its internal operating procedures, for example, by modifying its subcommittee assignment system, it “implicate[s] an elected official’s decisionmaking authority.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 17–18 (emphasis in original). Appellants and the United States fail to provide a workable standard for distinguishing between changes in rules governing voting and changes in the routine organization and functioning of government. Some standard is necessary, for in a real sense every decision taken by government implicates voting. This is but the felicitous consequence of democracy, in which power derives from the people. Yet no one would contend that when Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act it meant to subject all or even most decisions of government in covered jurisdictions to federal supervision. Rather, the Act by its terms covers any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting.” 42 U. S. C. § 1973c. A faithful effort to implement the design of the statute must begin by drawing lines between those governmental decisions that involve voting and those that do not. A simple example shows the inadequacy of the line proffered by appellants and the United States. Under appellants’ view, every time a covered jurisdiction passed a budget that differed from the previous year’s budget it would be