a concern to the Republican leadership of Congress, who worried that it would increase the political power of the former slave states, even as such states continued to deny freed slaves the right to vote. Two solutions were considered: reduce the Congressional representation of the former slave states (for example, by basing representation on the number of legal voters rather than the number of inhabitants) guarantee freed slaves the right to vote On January 31, 1866, the House of Representatives voted in favor of a proposed constitutional amendment that would reduce a state's representation in the House in proportion to which that state used "race or color" as a basis to deny the right to vote in that state. The amendment failed in the Senate, partly because radical Republicans foresaw that states would be able to use ostensibly race-neutral criteria, such as educational and property qualifications, to disenfranchise the freed slaves without negative consequence. So the amendment was changed to penalize states in which the vote was denied to male citizens over twenty-one for any reason other than participation in crime. Later, the Fifteenth Amendment was adopted to guarantee the right to vote could not be denied based on race or color. The effect of Section 2 was twofold: Although the three-fifths clause was not formally repealed, it was effectively removed from the Constitution. In the words of the Supreme Court in Elk v. Wilkins, Section2 "abrogated so much of the corresponding clause of the original Constitution as counted only three-fifths of such persons [slaves]." It was intended to penalize, by means of reduced Congressional representation, states that withheld the franchise from adult male citizens for any reason other than participation in crime. This, it was hoped, would induce the former slave states to recognize the political rights of the former slaves, without directly forcing them to do so—something that it was thought the states would not accept. Enforcement The first reapportionment after the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment occurred in 1873, based on the 1870 census. Congress appears to have attempted to enforce the provisions of Section 2, but was unable to identify enough disenfranchised voters to make a difference to any state's representation. In the implementing statute, Congress added a provision stating that A nearly identical provision remains in federal law to this day. Despite this legislation, in subsequent reapportionments, no change has ever been made to any