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Opinion of O'Connor, J.
clearance, the Federal Government may force the State to make changes to the redistricting plan. Once a State receives preclearance, it may implement a voting change.
The Mississippi Supreme Court has recognized that the redistricting process is not complete until the apportionment plan is cleared: "Voting changes subject to § 5 'will not be effective as law until and unless cleared.' " In re McMillin, 642 So. 2d 1336, 1339 (Miss. 1994) (quoting Connor v. Waller, supra, at 656). In McMillin, the Mississippi Supreme Court held that a plan for nonpartisan judicial elections passed by the legislature was not yet effective because it had not been precleared. 642 So. 2d, at 1339. Consequently, the court ordered elections to occur under the old plan, which required partisan judicial elections. See ibid. ("Consequently, the statutes currently governing primary judicial elections and setting such elections for Tuesday, June 7, 1994, are the only enforceable provisions regarding said primaries"). Thus, despite the fact that the legislature had passed a law mandating nonpartisan judicial elections, despite the fact that the new law expressly repealed the old law, despite the fact that the Governor had signed the law, and despite the fact that the State had submitted the new law to the United States Attorney General for preclearance under § 5, this new law was not operative for one reason: The United States Attorney General had not precleared this new law by the time of the new primary elections. See id., at 1338. Thus, at least in Mississippi, the old voting plan remains in effect until the new plan has been precleared.
Accordingly, the terms of § 2a(c)(5) should apply here, and the District Court should have ordered at-large elections for the entire state congressional delegation. Congress can expressly repeal § 2a(c) quite easily. But it has not done so. This Court should not presume to act in Congress' stead. And this Court should not read § 2a(c) in a manner divorced from any semblance of textual fidelity in order for it to reach what it deems to be the "correct" or more unintrusive re-
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