rsing a judgment for the
defendants, Justice Frankfurter said:[1174] "The Amendment nullifies
sophisticated as well as simple minded modes of discrimination. It hits
onerous procedural requirements which effectively handicap exercise of
the franchise by the colored race although the abstract right to vote
may remain unrestricted as to race."

As the selection of candidates by primary elections became general, the
denial of the right to vote in the primary assumed dominant importance.
For many years the Court hesitated to hold that party primaries were
elections within the purview of the Constitution. During that period the
equal protection clause was relied upon to invalidate discrimination
against Negroes. Under the clause, it is necessary to find that
inequality is perpetrated by the State.[1175] The Court had no
difficulty in holding that a State statute which forbade voting by
Negroes in a party primary was obnoxious to the Fourteenth
Amendment.[1176] The same conclusion was reached with respect to
exclusion by action of a party executive committee pursuant to authority
conferred by statute.[1177] But at first it refused to extend this rule
to a restriction on membership imposed without statutory authority by
the State convention of a party.[1178] The latter case was soon
overruled; having, in the meanwhile, decided that a primary is an
integral part of the electoral machinery,[1179] the Court ruled in Smith
_v._ Allwright,[1180] that a restriction on party membership imposed by
a State convention was invalid under the Fifteenth Amendment, where such
membership was a prerequisite for voting in the primary.

Failure has attended the few attempts which have been made to strike
down other alleged discriminations in election laws or in their
administration. Nearly fifty years ago the Court rejected a claim that
an act forbidding the registration of a voter until one year after his
intent to become a legal voter shall have been recorded was a denial of
equal protection.[1181] In Snowden _v._ Hughes,[1182] it held that an
alleged erroneous refusal of a State Primary Canvassing Board to certify
a person as a successful candidate in a party primary was not, in the
absence of a showing of purposeful discrimination, a denial of a
constitutional right which would justify a suit for damages against
members of the Board. Three recent attacks on inequalities in the
effective voting power of persons residing in different geograph