Voting rights in the United States in the context of "United States history"

Citizenship of the United States is a legal status that entails citizens with specific rights, duties, protections, and benefits in the United States. It serves as a foundation of fundamental rights derived from and protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States, such as freedom of expression, due process, the rights to vote, live and work in the United States, and to receive federal assistance.

There are two primary sources of citizenship: birthright citizenship, in which persons born within the territorial limits of the United States (except American Samoa) are presumed to be a citizen, or—providing certain other requirements are met—born abroad to a United States citizen parent, and naturalization, a process in which an eligible legal immigrant applies for citizenship and is accepted. The first of these two pathways to citizenship is specified in the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution which reads:

In the United States of America, majority-minority area or minority-majority area is a term describing a U.S. state or jurisdiction whose population is composed of less than 50% non-Hispanic whites. It is defined as a population with a collective majority of nationwide minorities, meaning a grouping of racial and ethnic groups (other than the national majority) that composes over 50% of the territorial population, regardless if one of those minority groups already attains a majority on its own. No single minority is yet the majority in any state, with the closest to that end being Hispanics in New Mexico (49% of the total population as of the 2020 census). As such, all majority-minority states do not have a single ethnic or racial group as the outright majority.

Racial data is derived from self-identification questions on the U.S. census and on U.S. Census Bureau estimates. (See race and ethnicity in the United States census). The term is often used in voting rights law to designate voting districts that are designed under the Voting Rights Act to enable ethnic or language minorities "the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice." In that context, the term was first used by the Supreme Court in 1977. The Court had previously used the term in employment discrimination and labor relations cases.

Ballot access is rules and procedures regulating the right to candidacy, the conditions under which a candidate, political party, or ballot measure is entitled to appear on voters' ballots in elections in the United States.

The jurisprudence of the right to candidacy and right to create a political party are less clear than voting rights in the United States. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has established in multiple cases that the federal constitution does not recognize a fundamental right to candidacy, and that state governments have a legitimate government interest in blocking "frivolous or fraudulent candidacies". As election processes are decentralized by Article I, Section 4, of the United States Constitution, ballot access laws are established and enforced by the states. As a result, ballot access processes may vary from one state to another.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark U.S. federal statute that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement on August 6, 1965. Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections. Designed to enforce voting rights protected by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Act sought to secure the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Act is considered to be the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted. The National Archives and Records Administration stated: "The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the most significant statutory change in the relationship between the federal and state governments in the area of voting since the Reconstruction period after the Civil War".

The act contains numerous provisions that regulate elections. Its "general provisions" provide nationwide protections for voting rights. Section 2 is a general provision that prohibits state and local government from imposing any rule that "results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race or color" or membership in a language minority group. Other provisions outlaw literacy tests and similar devices that were historically used to disenfranchise racial minorities. The act also contains "special provisions" that apply only to certain jurisdictions. A core special provision is the Section 5 preclearance requirement, which prohibits certain jurisdictions from implementing any change affecting voting without first receiving confirmation from the U.S. attorney general or the U.S. District Court for D.C. that the change does not discriminate against protected minorities. Another special provision requires jurisdictions containing significant language minority populations to provide bilingual ballots and other election materials.