Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Voting Rights Act of 1965

Voting Rights Act of 1965

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the TFAR nomination of the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page unless you are renominating the article at TFAR. For renominations, please add   to the top of the discussion and   at the bottom, then complete a new TFAR nom underneath.

The result was: scheduled for Today's featured article/August 6, 2014 by BencherliteTalk 00:01, 21 July 2014 (UTC)



The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of American federal legislation that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Act into law (pictured) during the height of the Civil Rights Movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later amended it five times. The Act allowed for a mass enfranchisement of racial minorities across the country, especially in the South. Section 2 of the Act prohibits state and local governments from imposing any voting law that has a discriminatory effect on racial or language minorities, and other provisions specifically ban literacy tests and similar discriminatory devices. Some provisions apply only to jurisdictions covered by the Act’s "coverage formula", which was designed to encompass jurisdictions that engaged in egregious voting discrimination. Chiefly, Section 5 prohibits these jurisdictions from changing their election practices without first receiving approval from the federal government that the change is not discriminatory. However, in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula as unconstitutional, reasoning that it no longer responded to current conditions.
 * Most recent similar article(s): The most recent "Law" article to be a TFA, Afroyim v. Rusk, will have been displayed six months prior to the proposed TFA date of this article. Thus far, Afroyim v. Rusk is the only "Law" article to be a TFA this year. Furthermore, that article was in the "Case" subcategory; there have been no "Legislation" articles this year at all.
 * Main editors: Prototime
 * Promoted: May 25, 2014
 * Reasons for nomination: August 6 of this year marks the 49th anniversary of the Act being signed into law. The Act continues to be a hot topic in federal courts and in Congress. In fact, today (June 25th, the one-year anniversary of Shelby County v. Holder) the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on whether to amend the Act to create a new coverage formula. Between that and the ongoing, high-profile litigation that has been brought under the Act against Texas, North Carolina, and other states, this article's appearance on the Main Page is timely. This is also my first TFA.
 * Support as nominator. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 04:20, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Support - Yes, please. Although the 50th anniversary next year may be better. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:16, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Delinked common words., why not wait a year? Presumably the 50th anniversary will be widely marked. BencherliteTalk 16:03, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Why 49th instead of 50th anniversary: Indeed the 50th anniversary will be widely marked, but despite not being as nice of a number, the 49th anniversary will almost certainly be more widely marked because the Act is presently a live issue in Congress and the media and likely won't be in a year. By coincidence, the anniversary this year falls during the middle of a national debate over whether to amend the Act to overturn the Supreme Court and restore core provisions of the Act. Interest in the Voting Rights Act is higher now than in anytime in the recent past and likely in the foreseeable future, and more readers will be served by displaying the article now than in a year. If it weren't for these circumstances, I would have agreed that waiting a year would probably better suit readers.
 * As an aside, thanks for delinking the common words (I carried a few too many wikilinks over from the lead), but I respectfully disagree that "literacy test" is a common word. I'll leave that up to you and others to decide, though. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 18:45, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't think we should be highlighting articles for political reasons. If interest is heightened at the moment, people will be finding the article on their own anyways. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 23:22, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
 * We're not highlighting this article for a "political" reason. We're highlighting this article because it's a Featured Article and August 6th is an important date for the subject. I was asked why this August 6th as opposed to a different August 6th, and I noted that interest in high now. Those are the reasons. The issue of timing came up because some editors thought reader interest might be higher on the nicely-numbered 50th anniversary. This suggests that one of the values of TFA is highlighting Featured Articles when they are of relevance and interest to readers—and highlighting the article now better serves that value. The reasons motivating a reader's interest in a subject should not be relevant. And given that this subject is a piece of U.S. federal civil rights legislation, all interest in this subject—be it in the subject's political history or in the subject's contemporary political developments—can equally be characterized as "political". –Prototime (talk · contribs) 01:09, 1 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Support - Not being American, my support assumes to be correct about the current high level of interest in the Act. Contra, I think it is a good idea to run articles when there is interest in their subject, regardless of the reason, be it political or other. We have done this before, such as running articles on US Presidential candidates on the date of the Presidential election. I expect that was a controversial process, but i thought it was a good idea. And as this is a neutral article about the Act, it should not be contentious in itself.hamiltonstone (talk) 23:59, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose. 50th Anniversary is next year and it would be perfect for then. It would get much more hits then too as there would be a lot of media coverage on the anniversary. Please run it next year. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 04:11, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * , since you are opposing this on the basis of media coverage, does your oppose take into account my explanation a few comments above about why this is receiving much more media coverage now then it likely will in a year? –Prototime (talk · contribs) 04:20, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't accept that. The 50th anniversary is going to be a pretty big news event with lots of news reports. It seems like a total waste to run an article on the 49th anniversary and not the 50th. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 00:35, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry to hear that, but you haven't offered any reasons, other than appealing to the number itself, as to why the subject will receive more news on its 50th anniversary than it is now. Media coverage is driven by a lot more than just certain anniversary dates, and particularly in the realm of legislation, an act is virtually guaranteed to receive substantially more media attention while it's a live issue before Congress than it will simply because it's having a roundly-numbered anniversary. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 04:01, 8 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Support, strongly, per comments by, above. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 19:30, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose - seeing as we're not the news, I see no reason to rush this to the front page because of current interest. Agree that it would be stronger as TFA this time next year. –  Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 15:05, 13 July 2014 (UTC)


 * WP:NOTNEWS concerns notability and undue weight in article content; it speaks to nothing concerning Today's Featured Article, the whole point of which is to serve reader interest. If WP:NOTNEWS were as broad as you suggest, it would prohibit WP:ITN. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 16:14, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * ...so Wikipedia is the news? News to me. –  Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 03:16, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment: For whatever little it's worth, the motivating reason I spent 11 months working on this article, bringing it up from a barely C-class article to a Featured Article and expanding its content nearly fourfold, was because of the present high public interest in this subject that sprang out of last year's Supreme Court decision and recent Congressional proposals to overturn it. After volunteering so much time and effort improving this article in service of that public interest, it's pretty disheartening to see editors driving by this TFAR with opposes based on nothing more than a human inclination to like numbers that are divisible by 5 and 10. I doubt that would have been an issue if I had made this nomination for the 46th or 47th anniversary. While I'm sure the improved article will still benefit some readers regardless of the timing of the TFA, this process is making me uncertain about how worthwhile my contributions to this project are when they can be so easily dismissed for such superficial reasons. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 16:15, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It's a fine article whether it's run on the main page today, tomorrow, or in 2018 on some utterly irrelevant date. Lots of us have written FAs yet to make TFA, but that doesn't make them any less constructive. –  Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 03:18, 15 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Scheduled - TFA is not "in the news" but some topicality is not objectionable; and if the nominator would rather have it this year than next, that's fine by me. BencherliteTalk 00:01, 21 July 2014 (UTC)