Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/665

 502us2$30I 09-08-95 14:43:51 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 502 U. S. 491 (1992)

507

Opinion of the Court

officials, but because it changed an elective office to an appointive one. The change in Russell County does not prohibit voters “from electing an officer formerly subject to the[ir] approval.” Allen, supra, at 570. Both before and after the change the citizens of Russell County were able to vote for the members of the Russell County Commission. To be sure, after the 1979 resolution each commissioner exercised less direct authority over road operations, that authority having been delegated to an official answerable to the commission. But as we concluded with respect to Etowah County, the fact that an enactment alters an elected official’s powers does not in itself render the enactment a rule governing voting. It is a routine part of governmental administration for appointive positions to be created or eliminated and for their powers to be altered. Each time this occurs the relative balance of authority is altered in some way. The making or unmaking of an appointive post often will result in the erosion or accretion of the powers of some official responsible to the electorate, but it does not follow that those changes are covered by § 5. By requiring preclearance of changes with respect to voting, Congress did not mean to subject such routine matters of governance to federal supervision. Were the rule otherwise, neither state nor local governments could exercise power in a responsible manner within a federal system. The District Court, wrestling with the problem we now face and recognizing the need to draw principled lines, held that Russell County’s adoption of the Unit System is not a covered change because it did not transfer power among officials answerable to different constituencies. Even upon the assumption (the assumption we reject in this case) that some transfers of power among government officials could be changes with respect to voting as that term is used in the Act, we disagree with the District Court’s test. The ques-