How did Sen. Barry Goldwater vote on the Voting Rights Act of 1965?
— Christian Savage, New York, N.Y. A: Goldwater, the Arizona Republican, was not a member of the Senate on May 26, 1965, when it voted 77-19 to pass the Voting Rights Act, which ended the use of literacy tests in registering voters. Goldwater’s Senate term was up in 1964, the same year he was his party’s presidential nominee, and he chose not to run for re-election (though he could have). In that vote, only two Republicans — John Tower of Texas and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina — opposed the measure, along with 17 “no” votes of Southern Democrats: the two senators from Alabama (Hill and Sparkman), Arkansas (Fulbright and McClellan), Florida (Holland and Smathers), Georgia (Dick Russell and Talmadge), Louisiana (Ellender and Long), Mississippi (Eastland and Stennis), North Carolina (Ervin and Jordan), Virginia (Byrd and Robertson), plus Donald Russell of South Carolina. Goldwater returned to the Senate in the 1968 elections, and remained there until he retired in 1986. He died on
