Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/666

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

tion whether power is shifted among officials answerable to the same or different constituencies is quite distinct from the question whether the power voters exercise over elected officials is affected. Intraconstituency changes may have a large indirect effect on the voters while interconstituency changes may have a small indirect effect, but in neither case is the effect a change in voting for purposes of the Act. The test adopted by the District Court does not provide the workable rule we seek. In any event, because it proceeds from the faulty premise that reallocations of authority within government can constitute voting changes, we cannot accept its approach. We need not consider here whether an otherwise uncovered enactment of a jurisdiction subject to the Voting Rights Act might under some circumstances rise to the level of a de facto replacement of an elective office with an appointive one, within the rule of Bunton v. Patterson. For present purposes it suffices to note that the Russell County Commission retains substantial authority, including the power to appoint the county engineer and to set his or her budget. The change at issue in Russell County is not a covered change. IV The United States urges that despite our understanding of the language of § 5, we should defer to its administrative construction of the provision. We have recognized that “the construction placed upon the [Voting Rights] Act by the Attorney General. . . is entitled to considerable deference.” NAACP v. Hampton County Election Comm’n, 470 U. S., at 178–179. See also United States v. Sheffield Bd. of Comm’rs, 435 U. S. 110, 131 (1978). But the principle has its limits. Deference does not mean acquiescence. As in other contexts in which we defer to an administrative interpretation of a statute, we do so only if Congress has not expressed its intent with respect to the question, and then only if the administrative interpretation is reasonable. See, e. g., Chev-