Edith Ingram, 74, is just called “The Judge” by many people in Sparta, Georgia, after being elected in 1968 as the first black probate judge in the United States. On her first day of work, white men stood at the base of the courthouse and threatened to shoot her in the back if she walked up the steps. She did anyway, and she remained in office for over three decades. (Photo by Roman Knertser/News21)

PHOENIX – November’s presidential election will be the first since the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down a key provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Three years ago, the monumental Supreme Court decision began allowing many states across the country to pass a wave of new laws that add requirements to vote, including requiring photo identification at the polls. State leaders say the new rules are part of an effort to curb voter fraud and keep elections fair.

A California Institute of Technology study released in 2015 evaluated the high court’s logic in its decision and provided “an absolute rebuttal,” according to the study’s author, J. Morgan Kousser.

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act had required states and local jurisdictions with a history of discrimination, mostly in the South and Southwest, to “preclear” voting-related changes through the federal government.

Section 5 had survived previous court challenges, and the Republican Congress renewed the Voting Rights Act in 2006.

But when Chief Justice Roberts read his majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder in June 2013, the decision dramatically altered the voting landscape.

The court struck down Section 4 of the act, which outlined the requirements for which areas fell under Section 5. As a result, the preclearance provision was rendered useless.

In the opinion, Roberts acknowledged that while voting discrimination was “rampant” in the South in the 1960s, “today’s statistics tell an entirely different story.” He said the South was being unfairly targeted by anti-discrimination laws based on a “fortuitous relationship.”

Kousser, a professor of history and social science, looked into these assertions. He found that since the passage of the Voting Rights Act until the Supreme Court decision, the Section 4-covered areas had a much higher number of voting rights violations and election rule changes as a result of Department of Justice intervention or litigation. This concentration of law changes in the areas covered by Section 4 also has not decreased over time, according to the study.

Of the more than 3,800 times county-level voting rules were overturned from 1957 to 2014, 91.7 percent of them were in places covered by Section 4, according to the study.

“A government program that works 91 percent of the time,” Kousser said during a phone interview with News21. “(The authors of the Voting Rights Act) understood very well where the infractions and discriminations were likely to take place.”

Because the Shelby County ruling dispensed with preclearance, previously covered states don’t need to notify the federal government of changes to voting rules before they implement them, meaning the only way for the Department of Justice to dismantle a potentially discriminatory law is to file suit after the law has been passed.

In a July speech to a national Latino rights advocacy group, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Shelby County struck down “the heart of the Voting Rights Act.”

The decision was 5-4. But because Justice Antonin Scalia has since died, the court now has an even 4-4 split between liberals and conservatives. And ongoing litigation over new state laws may reach the Supreme Court.

Thus far, liberal judges in federal courts have been more likely to overturn new state voting laws, saying they disenfranchise minority voters who often have limited access to things like government-issued IDs and reliable transportation. Support for new voting requirements has largely come from Republicans.

November’s presidential election could decide much of this national debate. The new president will likely nominate a justice to fill the high court’s empty seat.

But to many, today’s debate over voting access is not new. The Voting Rights Act is considered one of the pinnacle achievements of the civil rights movement and was the beginning of the end for Jim Crow laws that kept many African-Americans from the ballot.

Edith Ingram was elected the first black probate judge in the nation in 1968, in a small, impoverished town called Sparta, Georgia, that wasn’t racially integrated until the ‘70s. Georgia is among several states embroiled in civil rights lawsuits over its removal of some voters from registration rolls and its proof-of-citizenship requirements to register.

“When you have a people who don’t realize where they came from and the history of what has happened, they don’t know where they’re going,” Ingram said.  “Now, those young black people and some of the older people are giving our gains back faster than we got ‘em. And if they ever get their foot on our necks again, it’s going to be another 50 years before we rise again.”

Come back Aug. 20 to see the full News21 report on “Voting Wars.”

Hector Barreto, chairman of the Latino Coalition, said undecided Hispanics in states like Arizona could determine the outsome of this year’s election.

Editor’s note: This story first appeared on Cronkite News.

CLEVELAND – Despite his previous attacks on Mexicans, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump still has a chance to “close the sale” with Hispanic voters as the general election approaches, the leader of a Latino organization said Wednesday.

Hector Barreto, the chairman of the Latino Coalition, made the remarks at the release of a coalition poll that showed some Latino Republicans may still be willing to vote for Trump, but said that many are waiting to see his next moves.

“Campaigns have different seasons: You have the primary season, which is the regular season, and then you get into the playoffs and the championship season and that’s where we’re at right now,” Barreto said.

“This is the time the most voters are going to be paying attention,” Barreto said at the event not far from the Republican National Convention. “So that’s the opportunity to close the sale, especially because there’s so many Hispanics on the fence.”

Barreto said undecided Latinos could make all the difference in key states, including Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina.

But the leader of a new Phoenix-based grassroots Hispanic organization, Mijente, called the idea that a Trump presidency would benefit Latinos a “laughable” proposition.

“I think political diversity in our community is important and beneficial, and it’s realistic,” said Marisa Franco, who was in Cleveland with members of her group to protest Trump’s immigration comments.

“But many Latino Republicans have rejected Trump as a candidate for the Republican Party,” Franco said. “So not only are many Latinos not Republicans, but many Latino Republicans aren’t supporting Trump, so those that are still holding onto something are out of the loop.”

The coalition telephone survey of 1,000 Latinos reported results from the 200 who identified as Republicans or independents. It indicated that more than 40 percent of the Latinos surveyed who identified as conservatives support Trump, but this support drops sharply among Latino moderates.

Both moderate and conservative Republican Latino respondents cared more deeply about national security and the economy than immigration, according to the poll.

Tucson resident Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, an Arizona delegate to the Republican National Convention, is a strong supporter of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

One of those Hispanic Republicans supporting Trump is Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, a Tucson resident and delegate to the Republican National Convention this week.

Saucedo Mercer was 24 when she immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico. The United States today is “not the same country that I immigrated to,” she said at a delegation breakfast earlier this week.

“We’re racially divided and I don’t call myself a Mexican-American, because I’m an American by choice,” she said. “Just like I lock my home at night, I don’t want anyone coming in my country that’s not supposed to be coming in.”

She defended statements by Trump on Mexicans, Muslims and others.

“The comments made by Trump about Mexicans, the shoe doesn’t fit on me,” Saucedo Mercer said. “I’m not one of those, just like not all Muslims are terrorists, not every Mexican is a rapist.”

A common refrain among Republican Latinos is the Reagan-era statement that “Latinos are conservatives, they just don’t know it yet.”

“They’re proud and they’re patriotic and they’re conservative and they’re business owners,” Barreto said of Latinos in the U.S. “They’re the fastest growing segment of small business — that’s ripe territory for a Republican message. The message is important but the messenger is important too.”

Nationally, 63 percent of registered Latino voters say they identify with the Democratic Party, compared to 27 percent for the GOP, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center poll. But that was up from 2011, when just 20 percent of Latinos said they identified with Republicans.

Rudy Beserra, the senior vice president of Latino affairs for Coca-Cola, said Trump has not written those voters off.

“I know that Trump is going to have a Latino advisory board to advise him on what they have to do to go out and do grassroots campaigning,” said Beserra, who was being honored at the Latino Coalition event.