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Opinion of the Court
dual registration and purge system." App. to Juris. Statement 25a. See McCain, supra, at 255-256 (relying on "such after-the-fact Justice Department statements . . . in determining whether a particular change was actually precleared").
Regardless, the law ordinarily permits the Attorney General to rest a decision to preclear or not to preclear upon the submission itself. Clark, supra, at 658-659; United States v. Sheffield Bd. of Comm'rs, 435 U. S. 110, 136-138 (1978). Tying preclearance to a particular set of written documents themselves helps to avoid the kinds of arguments about meaning and intent that Mississippi raises here—arguments that, were they frequently to arise, could delay expeditious decisionmaking as to the many thousands of requests for clearance that the Department of Justice receives each year. See Clark, supra, at 658-659. In sum, we conclude that the Department of Justice, on February 1, did not preclear the New System.
2
Finally, Mississippi argues that the NVRA, because it specifically applies only to registration for federal elections, 42 U. S. C. § 1973gg-2(a), automatically authorizes it to maintain separate voting procedures; hence § 5 cannot be used to force it to implement the NVRA for all elections. If Mississippi means that the NVRA does not forbid two systems and that § 5 of the VRA does not categorically—without more—forbid a State to maintain a dual system, we agree. The decision to adopt the NVRA federal registration system is not, by itself, a change for the purposes of § 5, for the State has no choice but to do so. And of course, a State's retention of a prior system for state elections, by itself, is not a change. It is the discretionary elements of the new federal system that the State must preclear. The problem for Mississippi is that preclearance typically requires examination of discretionary changes in context—a context that includes history, purpose, and practical effect. See City of Lockhart v.
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