After a long and difficult battle culminating in the Selma to Montgomery March, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) was born 50 years ago today. Previous efforts had failed to curb racial discrimination in voting, but the VRA’s passage marked the beginning of a new era. As we commemorate this singular achievement of the Civil Rights Movement and think about the inspiring stories of the people who worked to pass this legislation, the Fair Elections Legal Network (FELN) sought to revisit the numbers behind the VRA’s most innovative and transformative provision: mandatory preclearance of all voting changes for certain states and jurisdictions.