980
Per Curiam
Per Curiam.
Texas by statute authorizes counties to appoint election judges, one for each precinct, who supervise voting at the polls on election days. In 1983 and several times thereafter, Dallas County changed its procedures for selecting these officials. Each of the new methods used party-affiliation formulas of one sort or another. After the most recent change in 1996, appellants sued the county and others in the United States District Court, claiming that § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 439, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1973c, required that the changes be precleared.
A three-judge court held that preclearance was not required because the county was simply exercising, under the state statute, its "discretion to adjust [the procedure for appointing election judges] according to party power." App. to Juris. Statement 4a. The court apparently concluded that this "discretionary" use of political power meant that the various methods for selecting election judges were not covered changes under § 5. The court also concluded that the Justice Department's preclearance of a 1985 submission from the State—the recodification of its entire election code—operated to preclear the county's use of partisan considerations in selecting election judges. The court denied injunctive relief, and later dismissed appellants' complaint pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Appellants have brought both of these rulings here.
We believe that the decision of the District Court is inconsistent with our precedents. First, in NAACP v. Hampton County Election Comm'n, 470 U. S. 166, 178 (1985), we held that even "an administrative effort to comply with a statute that had already received clearance" may require separate preclearance, because § 5 "reaches informal as well as formal changes." Thus, the fact that the county here was exercising its "discretion" pursuant to a state statute does not shield its actions from § 5. The question is simply whether the county, by its actions, whether taken pursuant to a statute
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