Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/682

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PRESLEY v. ETOWAH COUNTY COMM’N Stevens, J., dissenting

Although the test I propose here may not adequately implement § 5, it would certainly provide a workable rule that would result in the correct disposition of this case without opening the Pandora’s box that the Court seems to fear.24 III The record indicates that the resolution challenged in the Russell County case may well have had a nondiscriminatory, anticorruption purpose.25 It would not be covered by the narrow standard that I have proposed as a “workable rule” for deciding the Etowah County case. I would, however, adopt a broader standard that would require preclearance in this case as well. The proper test, I believe, is suggested by the examples of resistance to the increase in black registration that were noted in our opinion in Perkins v. Matthews, supra.26 24

The Court is strangely silent about the first half of the Etowah County majority’s response to the election of Commissioner Presley. The logic of its analysis would lead to the conclusion that even the Road Supervision Resolution is not covered by § 5, but one cannot be sure because the Court recognizes that an otherwise uncovered enactment “might under some circumstances rise to the level of a de facto replacement of an elective office with an appointive one.” Ante, at 508. Despite the Court’s overriding interest in formulating “workable rules to confine the coverage of § 5 to its legitimate sphere,” ante, at 506, the scope of that exception must await future cases. 25 According to one judge on the three-judge District Court, the change “was adopted to eliminate a practice that had proved inefficient and conducive to abuses. . . [and] eventually resulted in a criminal indictment of one of the commissioners.” App. to Juris. Statement of Appellant Presley 25a (Hobbs, J., concurring). 26 In addition to the comment by Congressman McCulloch quoted, supra, at 519–520, the Court also quoted from a then recent study of the operation of the Voting Rights Act by the United States Civil Rights Commission, as follows: “ ‘The history of white domination in the South has been one of adaptiveness, and the passage of the Voting Rights Acts and the increased black