into nine wards, with one city commissioner from each ward to be chosen in the citywide election. There was no residency requirement for Board of Education candidates.
In 1966, the General Assembly of Georgia passed several laws of local application that extensively amended the electoral provisions of the city's charter. These enactments altered the Rome electoral scheme in the following ways:
(1) the number of wards was reduced from nine to three;
(2) each of the nine commissioners would henceforth be elected at-large to one of three numbered posts established within each ward;
(3) each commissioner would be elected by majority rather than plurality vote, and if no candidate for a particular position received a majority, a runoff election would be held between the two candidates who had received the largest number1965, 95 years after ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment extended the right to vote *182 to all citizens regardless of race or color, Congress found that racial discrimination in voting was an "insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts of our country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution." South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 309. In adopting the Voting Rights Act, Congress sought to remedy this century of obstruction by shifting "the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims." Id., at 328. Ten years later, Congress found that a 7-year extension of the Act was necessary to preserve the "limited and fragile" achievements of the Act and to promote further amelioration of voting