Cite as: 517 U. S. 186 (1996)
Thomas, J., dissenting
or procedure with respect to voting' within the meaning of § 5"). Regardless of whether Congress has ever "endorsed these broad constructions of § 5," ante, at 205, they have no bearing on the meaning of § 14.
Nor does the reference to the election of party officials bring the convention within the ambit of § 14, as Justice Stevens and Justice Breyer argue. See ante, at 207- 208; ante, at 236-237. Section 14 does refer to "votes cast with respect to candidates for public or party office." 42 U. S. C. § 1973l(c)(1) (1988 ed.). But Justices Stevens and Breyer amputate that phrase from the rest of the sentence, which provides that casting a vote at a "primary, special, or general election" for "candidates for . . . party office" constitutes "voting" for purposes of the Act. See ibid. (voting is "all action necessary to make a vote effective in any primary, special, or general election, including, but not limited to . . . casting a ballot, and having such ballot counted properly and included in the appropriate totals of votes cast with respect to candidates for public or party office"). Under § 14, then, voting does extend to casting a ballot for a party officer, but only when that ballot is cast at a primary, special, or general election. Since this is obvious on the face of the statute, I see no need to resort to the legislative history of the Bingham Amendment. Cf. ante, at 208-209 (opinion of Stevens, J.); ante, at 236-237 (Breyer, J., concurring in judgment). Though Representative Bingham may have had every intention of covering the activities of political parties under § 5, there is no evidence that he succeeded in transforming that intention into law.
Finally, as Justice Stevens notes, §§ 2 and 5 would appear to be designed to work in tandem. See ante, at 209- 210. Nonetheless, there is a patent discrepancy between the broad sweep of § 2, which refers to "the political processes leading to nomination or election," and the undeniably narrower definition of voting set forth in § 14, which is limited to the context of a "primary, special, or general election."
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