This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 5:01 PM EDT

If Wednesday’s argument before the Supreme Court is any indication, a majority of the justices seemed inclined to strike down or curtail key sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  Even if the court does move in that direction, election officials in some states will have more leeway to change some procedures, but voters in 2014 won’t suddenly wake up in 1964.   

Hearing a challenge brought by Shelby County, Ala., several justices voiced skepticism about the formula the law uses to decide which states and other jurisdictions are required to get permission, or “preclearance,” from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington for any change in voting procedures that they seek to make.

In 2006 Congress reauthorized Section 5 of the law for another 25 years. The current formula uses election data from 1972 and earlier to determine which places section 5 applies to. Critics of the law say the formula is archaic and ought to be scrapped.

Currently nine states, mostly in the South, as well as 54 counties in New York, California, Florida, North Carolina and South Dakota and 12 townships in Michigan and New Hampshire, are covered by section 5.

What effect would a ruling which struck down or curbed section 5 have on elections in the United States?

Would parts of the country now covered by section 5 revert to the days of poll taxes, literacy tests, murders of voter registration workers, racial gerrymandering of districts, and other devices to negate the power of African-American, Latino and other minority voters?

The short answer is no, and that’s because a separate section of the Voting Rights Act, section 2 – which is a permanent part of the statute and need not be periodically renewed, as section 5 must be – bans voting procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups identified by the law, which includes not only Spanish, but Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and several Native American and Alaska Native language groups.

In recent years, the Justice Department, under both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations, has brought section 2 voting discrimination cases against jurisdictions in Massachusetts, Montana, Illinois, California, South Carolina, and several other states.

For example, in 2009 the Justice Department took action against Salem County, New Jersey and the borough of Penns Grove, N.J. for allegedly discriminating against Puerto Rican voters.

The Department charged that local election officials had never translated the ballot into Spanish in any election held in Penns Grove, and thus “numerous voters of Puerto Rican descent who cannot understand the ballot in English have been unable to fully exercise their voting rights.”

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

With images of murdered Mississippi civil rights worker Medgar Evers, demonstrators rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court February 27, 2013 in Washington, DC.

These kinds of enforcement actions will continue under section 2 no matter what the high court decides on section 5.

But the Solicitor General Donald Verrilli argued Wednesday that getting rid of section 5 – and its requirement that covered jurisdictions get pre-approval of their voting procedures – will make it more costly and time consuming for voters to challenge allegedly discriminatory practices. He said section 5 has a deterrent effect – blocking discriminatory practices before they’re ever implemented.

He said polling place changes are the most frequent type of election procedure submitted to the Justice Department under Section 5. “Changes in the polling places at the last minute before an election can be a source of great mischief,” he told the justices. 

He contended that “there is no way in the world you could use Section 2 to effectively police that kind of mischief.” Given the cost of litigation, he said, “The cost-benefit ratio is… going to tilt strongly against bringing these suits.”

Michael Pitts, an expert on the Voting Rights Act who is a professor at Indiana University School of Law and who worked on voting rights cases when he served as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, said, “There is certainly a possibility of more last-minute mischief with polling places if Section 5 were struck down.”

He said Section 5 enforcement actions “are rather simple. To attempt to get the same results using other provisions of the Voting Rights Act, such as Section 2, will be much harder.”

Responding to Justice Anthony Kennedy’s suggestion during Wednesday’s argument that some Justice Department attorneys who now are working on section 5 could shifted to section 2 enforcement, Pitts said, “The problem with Section 2 lawsuits is that at the very least, DOJ has to find out about the problem, then they have to conduct an extensive investigation before filing a lawsuit, and then they have to spend lots of time and resources to win the case.  Section 2 cases are not easy to win.”

University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock, an expert on the Voting Rights Act and Southern politics, said elimination of section 5 would “probably not” make a difference in voter registration or voting in places that are now covered by section 5.

He said in section 5 covered jurisdictions, black registration and turnout “is pretty much at the same level” as registration and turnout among white voters. He added, “Hispanic registration and participation rates are lower but that’s true whether you’re looking at section 5 states or looking at states which are not subject to section 5.”

Bullock said that when it comes to drawing new district line for state legislatures and for House seats that due to section 2, “there would still very much be a protection in place against actions which were found to be discriminatory even if section 5 were to be struck down.”

Bullock said one major change that came about as a result of section 2 was the elimination of at-large districts for school boards, county councils, etc. and the move to single-member districts. At-large districts had been used to dilute the power of minority voters.

If the court eliminates section 5, “Would they (local officials) go back to at-large elections?” He thinks not, because “politicians tend to like the system under which they have succeeded, and they think there’s less uncertainty in a system which they’ve already worked successfully. County council or school board members elected under a single-member district system would be reluctant to go back to at-large elections even if that was what was traditionally done until, say 20, years ago.”

Bullock said if section 5 is struck down he does expect some of the now-covered states would move to enact voter identification laws which the Justice Department has so far blocked from enacting.

One unknown is how Congress would react if the high court does strike down section 5. Would it devise an updated formula, perhaps based on 2012 data, for that tried to target jurisdictions with large disparities of minority and white voter turnout? Would it use some other metric? It’s too soon to know, but it’s worth recalling that in 2006 Congress chose to avoid the difficulty of writing a new coverage formula – one reason the Shelby County case reached the high court.

This story was originally published on Thu Feb 28, 2013 1:35 PM EST

LONDON-- Mitt Romney said Wednesday that more restrictive gun laws would likely not have prevented last week's deadly mass shooting at a Colorado Cineplex, and argued that it would take Americans changing their hearts, not their legislation, to prevent similar future attacks.

"Political implications, legal implications are something which will be sorted out down the road," Romney told NBC's Brian Williams during an exclusive interview here in London. "But I don't happen to believe that America needs new gun laws. A lot of what this young man did was clearly against the law. But the fact that it was against the law did not prevent it from happening."

Romney, who enacted an assault weapons ban as governor of Massachusetts (with the support of a Democratic legislature) would not say whether he still believes that weapons like the AR-15 assault rifle used in the Colorado shooting were "instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people," as he described them during the bill signing ceremony in 2002.

When Williams followed up later in the interview on the Aurora attack, Romney argued that it would take a change in heart, not laws, to stop future violence.

"Well, this person shouldn't have had any kind of weapons and bombs and other devices and it was illegal for him to have many of those things already. But he had them," Romney said, although the guns used in the shooting were all purchased legally.

"And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won't. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what's essential, to improve the lots of the American people."

NBC News

NBC's Brian Williams interviews Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in London on Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Romney used the interview to shore up several policy and strategic positions laid out by his campaign in recent weeks, reiterating that he would only release two years of tax returns so as not to provide fodder for Democratic operatives to " twist and distort and to turn in different directions and try and make a big deal out of." He also repeated the major planks of his economic plan, which he says differentiates him from the last Republican president, George W. Bush.

Williams also asked the candidate about controversial comments on the front page of a British newspaper, reportedly given by an unnamed Romney adviser, who called President Barack Obama a "novice" in foreign affairs, and said the Democrat did not fully value the "Anglo-Saxon" nature of the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.

“We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special. The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have,” the adviser is quoted telling the Daily Telegraph.

Earlier today, Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul flatly denied the comments came from anyone inside the Romney camp, or that those views were shared by the former Massachusetts governor. Romney said he was generally "not enthusiastic" about adopting the comments of unnamed advisers in newspaper stories, and pointed out he gets "advice" every day along rope lines and on the street.

“But I can tell you that we have a very special relationship between the United States and Great Britain," Romney said. "It goes back to our very beginnings, cultural … and historical. But I also believe the president understands that. So I don't know agree with whoever that advisor might be. But do agree that we have a very common bond between ourselves and Great Britain."

When it comes to selecting a vice presidential nominee to join him on the Republican ticket, Romney told Williams he has still not made a final decision, and confirmed that he would not be announcing his pick until at least next week, after he returns from his week-long trip abroad.

"While I'm overseas, I'm not gonna announce my vice presidential running mate. But when the decision is made, I'll make that announcement. It's not made yet," Romney said. "I can't tell you when it's gonna be. That's … that's something which we'll decide down the road."

This visit was timed to coincide with the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics, where Ann Romney’s horse, Rafalca, is competing in the equestrian sport of dressage. Will the presumptive GOP nominee be cheering it on?

"I have to tell you, this is Ann's sport. I'm not even sure which day the sport goes on," Romney said. "She will get the chance to see it, I will not be watching  the event.  I hope her horse does well.  But just the honor of being here and representing our country and seeing the other Olympians is something which I'm sure the people that are associated with this are looking forward to."

In an exclusive interview with NBC's Brian Williams, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney discussed gun laws in the wake of the Aurora shooting:

WILLIAMS: "On things however like Aurora, Colorado, do you see why Americans get frustrated at politics.  They can see and hear your words from earlier in their career, people are hurting out there. Perhaps they want to start a national conversation about whether an AR-15 belongs in the hands of a citizen, whether a citizen should be able to buy 6-thousand rounds off the internet. You see the argument?"

Anthony Quintano/NBC News

NBC's Brian Williams interviews Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in London on Wednesday, July 25, 2012

ROMNEY: "Well this person shouldn't have had any kind of weapons and bombs and other devices and it was illegal for him to have many of those things already. But he had them. And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won't. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what's essential, to improve the lots of the American people."

The full interview airs tonight on NBC Nightly News. 

It must have been a long 40 seconds.

Minutes after 10 o’clock this morning, as news of the health-care ruling was coming out, President Obama -- who does not get any forewarning from the Supreme Court on its decisions -- was, like much of the rest of the country, relegated to watching television.

He stood in front of a television, with a split screen of four different channels, when banners flashed on two cable networks showing that the law’s central tenet -- the mandate requiring all Americans to buy health insurance -- had been struck down, according to White House aides who briefed reporters today.

For about 40 seconds, the president believed that his landmark, legacy-defining legislative accomplishment, had been gutted.

That was until White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler came into the room and gave the president two thumbs up -- the law had actually been upheld. She quickly explained to a confused president what had happened.

While others, including NBC News and MSNBC, reported the correct information, the White House also did have a government lawyer at the high court relaying information to Ruemmler.

Obama’s first call, according to White House aides, was to his Solicitor General Donald Verrilli to congratulate him. Verrilli, who argued the case before a sometimes contentious row of justices, had been mocked by some in the legal community for his handling of the case.

The president made it clear he was not among the doubters. He told Verrilli he always thought he had done an excellent job. Ruemmler got a hug.

On the details of the law, one aide stressed that some estimates show less than one percent of people will end up having to pay -- what’s now been labeled by the court as -- the health-care tax.

Aides believe the Medicaid portion of the decision is not particularly significant, because, in the past, when faced with such decisions (the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, for example), the states usually end up enacting the laws.

The White House is also downplaying any kind of poll bump the president could get from the ruling. Advisers to the president believe the country is burned out on the health-care argument, the last thing people want is a bloody fight, and there's no way the GOP can repeal it without such a fight.

The White House also happily points out that Obama's challenger, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, put a mandate in place as governor of Massachusetts, and that now he's running away from it -- at least as federal law.

One aide also admitted that advisers had always assumed the Commerce Clause argument was the better way to get five justices on their side.

Of course, there's also the legislative reality that calling the mandate a "tax" would have made the law even less palatable when trying to pass it through Congress.

LITTLETON, N.H.-- New Hampshirites living south of the White Mountains would have been hard pressed not to cross paths with Mitt Romney Wednesday, in some form or fashion.
 
There he was, up bright and early, at the Stage Restaurant in Keene. Romney was already on his second major television interview of the day by 9:00 a.m., while patrons sipped coffee and tried not to spill it and gaggles of press packed the tiny diner.
 
"If we knew at the time of our entry into Iraq that there were no weapons of mass destruction, if somehow we had been given that information, why, obviously we would not have gone in," Romney told NBC's Chuck Todd on MSNBC's "Daily Rundown" this morning, generating just one of many headlines to come.
 
Four interviews and fewer than four hours later it was lunch time, and the former governor and his wife were passing out slices of pizza and cracking jokes in Newport. Romney ordered his pizza Hawaiian style, but with olives, and left a tip at the counter.
 
"Hope we find it," Romney said of his pie, keenly aware of the crush of reporters and patrons who would forever block his path back to the counter.
 
Whether he ever ate the pizza may remain a mystery. Romney next showed up carrying sandwiches - dozens of them - for the press trailing him on this four-day, blitzkrieg tour of the state considered a must-win for his presidential ambitions.
 
Passing out subs with abandon, Romney kidded about the reluctance of some reporters to accept a simple sandwich.
 
"What are guys eating back there? Filet mignon with some brie, is that it back here? What's going on?" The former Massachusetts governor said, before mocking another famously patrician politician from his home state. "This is the John Kerry bus, back there, I'm sorry."
 
From there it was on to cutting steel with lasers like a movie villain in Hanover (complete with stylish eye protection), and serving Spaghetti to dozens of supporters at a VFW in Ashland to round out the day.
 
Get all that?
 
Somehow, between the food, the bus packed with surrogates and friends (New Hampshire's own Sen. Kelly Ayotte, former Gov. John Sununu and Former Sen. Judd Gregg tagged along for much of the day) and yes, the hand-shaking with voters, Romney's campaign remembered: this trip is business. The high-visibility, high-intensity schedule is meant to shore up support for Romney in a state most political observers believe he must hold, particularly if he falters in Iowa, or if his poll numbers in South Carolina and Florida continue to lag far from striking distance of the current front-runner, Newt Gingrich.
 
With a constant crush of cameras and national attention at every stop, Romney kept the news media busy, churning out story after story.
 
The multimillionaire Romney told NBC News he didn't intend to release his tax returns, even if he were to become his party's nominee.
 
"Never say never, but I don't intend to do so." Romney told NBC, bouncing along in his tricked-out bus.
 
Then there was the payroll tax cut fight, which Romney tried to stay largely above, managing to ding the President on an issue that has largely devolved into a battle between house and senate Republicans.
 
"Leaders are involved in the process, as opposed to standing back and just criticizing the people who are in the process. The Democrats have the majority in the Senate. This is not just a Republican matter, this is Republicans and Democrats," Romney said in Keene. "The president should've been working with his leaders in his own party and he should've been reaching across the aisle to find among Republicans those who he thinks could come to common position with the Democrats."
 
Romney also stoked the flames in his burgeoning battle with Newt Gingrich, warning the former speaker that the stinging ads aired in early states by a Super PAC supporting Romney was just the beginning of the negative onslaught to come.
 
"If you can't stand the relatively modest heat right now, wait until Obama's hell's kitchen shows up," Romney said. "Obama is putting together a billion dollars, he's going to be attacking us day and night -- he's already attacking me."
 
That brought a retort from Newt Gingrich, also campaigning in the state, later in the day.
 
"I'll tell you what. If he wants to test the heat, I'll meet him anywhere in Iowa next week, one-on-one, 90 minutes no moderator, just a timekeeper." Gingrich told NBC News. "He wants to try out the kitchen? I'll be happy to debate him anywhere. We'll bring his ads, and he can defend [them]."
 
But Romney was already past the kitchen by then - making his only non food-related stop of the day at Hypertherm, a steel cutting business in Hanover, where he praised the ingenuity and skill of the workers there, and defended his record at Bain Capital, when a voter questioned him about layoffs.
 
"The truth is this, the business I was in, called Bain Capital, we invested in over 100 different businesses. Some of them didn't work. Some failed. Some ultimately laid off individuals and some of them went out of business," Romney said, before spinning the question around into a prelude of a possible future democratic attack against him. "I know the Obama administration will try and put free enterprise on trial. And guess what? That happens."
 
By the time Romney was serving meals a few hours later and fifty miles down the road at a VFW hall, the news had largely been drawn out of the day, like blood being taken. There was nothing left to give in Ashland, except spaghetti, well-wishes for the holidays, and stories from Olympic heroes past meant to warm the heart on a night so icy, some supporters called the campaign just to be sure the event wouldn't be cancelled.
 
If some New Hampshirites failed to see Romney today - either on TV, in person, on traveling the winding back roads of New Hampshire in his enormous blue and white bus, fear not. Tomorrow is another day, with seven more stops in the North Country, and at least one more network television interview.
 
By then, surely, every resident of the Granite State will have had their own run-in with Mitt Romney.
 
If not, he'll be back. Of that you can be certain.

 DES MOINES, Iowa -- On the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, South Dakota Senator John Thune endorsed Mitt Romney in the Hawkeye State, the second Republican senator in four days to throw their support behind Romney’s bid for the White House.

“I want to do everything I can to encourage to persuade people…that the person that can lead America back to greatness is the former governor of Massachusetts and hopefully our next president, Mitt Romney,”Sen. Thune told the few hundred employees gathered at Nationwide Insurance in Des Moines.

Thune, who endorsed John McCain last cycle and was on his short list for his vice presidential candidates, was thought to be eyeing a 2012 presidential bid himself.  Romney said he was relieved Thune decided not to run this year.

 “I'm so lucky that he didn't run and I'm so glad he's been willing to be with me today”because Thune would have been my “toughest competitor,”Romney said after joking at one point that Thune looks like quarterback Tom Brady from the New England Patriots.

Since South Dakota borders Iowa, Thune’s endorsement in the first-in-the-nation caucus state will only continue speculation that Romney is making a harder push here.

Romney himself urged Iowans to come out and participate in the caucuses on Jan. 3.

“Iowa has the first, and in some respects, one of the most powerful voices for who our nominee will be,” he said. “I’d like you to think about that and take the occasion to go to the caucuses. It’s a responsibility. The country counts on you.”

Last week the former Massachusetts’s governor’s campaign opened an Iowa headquarters and today were passing out cards asking if people were attending the caucus, if they were interested in becoming a precinct captain, or wanted to volunteer for the campaign.

This event, Romney’s third in the state in just over a month, came just a few hours after another GOP debate focusing on foreign policy. He was asked to clarify his stance on immigration following remarks former House Speaker Newt Gingrich made last night on illegal immigrants.

“My view is that people who come here illegally should not have a special break or a special pathway to become permanent residents or citizens of this country,” Romney told reporters. “They should be in line or at the back of the line with other people who want to come here legally.”

And in light of the Thanksgiving holiday, Romney made sure to point out what he was thankful for to the employees of one of the largest insurance companies in the U.S.

 “I am grateful for many things… for my family, for my faith, for my country. I love America,” Romney said.