Important elections are coming this fall. In addition to electing the next president of the United States, we will be voting for members of Congress, and state and local leaders.

Anniversaries can be celebratory or somber. Today we celebrate the 51st anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and it is the kind of anniversary in which we hail the success of the act, while also acknowledging the deficiencies in our democracy that make the full act necessary.