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the film

ABOUT

Can a forgotten provision of the Constitution protect voting rights?

Article XIV

A lone attorney tries to save voting rights by suing the U.S. Government to enforce a 150-year-old provision of the Constitution. Passed after the Civil War, Section Two of the 14th Amendment says that states that abridge or deny voting rights will have a lower percentage of their population count toward apportionment of their Congressional representatives. If in effect,

XIV§2 could cause states to lose representatives in the U.S. House and have them redistributed to other states.

This provision has never been enforced.

Section 2 text

Fourteen Section Two follows the progress of attorney Jared Pettinato’s legal case against the U.S. Census Bureau, which is responsible for apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives after each census.

 

The film probes America’s forgotten history to discover why a section of the Constitution has been ignored. And it asks whether one person can revolutionize voting in America.

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