6 BRNOVICH v. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE Opinion of the Court The House bill “originally passed . . . under a loose understanding that §2 would prohibit all discriminatory ‘effects’ of voting practices, and that intent would be ‘irrelevant,’ ” but “[t]his version met stiff resistance in the Senate.” Mississippi Republican Executive Committee v. Brooks, 469 U. S. 1002, 1010 (1984) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (quoting H. R. Rep. No. 97–227, at 29). The House and Senate compromised, and the final product included language proposed by Senator Dole. 469 U. S., at 1010–1011; S. Rep. No. 97– 417, at 3–4; 128 Cong. Rec. 14131–14133 (1982) (Sen. Dole describing his amendment). What is now §2(b) was added, and that provision sets out what must be shown to prove a §2 violation. It requires consideration of “the totality of circumstances” in each case and demands proof that “the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation” by members of a protected class “in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” 52 U. S. C. §10301(b) (emphasis added). Reflecting the Senate Judiciary Committee’s stated focus on the issue of vote dilution, this language was taken almost verbatim from White. This concentration on the contentious issue of vote dilution reflected the results of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s extensive survey of what it regarded as Fifteenth Amendment violations that called out for legislative redress. See, e.g., S. Rep. No. 97–417, at 6, 8, 23–24, 27, 29. That survey listed many examples of what the Committee took to be unconstitutional vote dilution, but the survey identified only three isolated episodes involving the outright denial of the right to vote, and none of these concerned the equal application of a facially neutral rule specifying the time, place, or manner of voting. See id., at 30, and