short term killed off the core of that act. now, whether it can be revived is an open question, one we'll visit in a moment. first, you have to understand what the court did today. there was a lot of confusion because it was complicated on purpose. i want to just walk through it. section 5 is often referred to as the heart of the voting rights act. it requires what's known as preclearance of any changes to the way elections are run in certain parts of this country. now, what is so brilliant about its approach? informed by history, is in the battle days before the voting rights act, some racist locality would enact some new voting rule to make it harder or impossible for black people to vote. sure, those people could sue but might be a year or two before your lawsuit was heard and in the meantime the election in question would have happened and the damage would have been done. this happened all the time. this is our history. and the genius of section 5 of the voting rights act is it's a preemptive, proactive means of