<P> 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 </P> <P> should any state, after the passage of this Act, deny or abridge the right of any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty - one years of age, and citizens of the United States, to vote at any election named in the amendments to the Constitution, article fourteen, section two, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the number of Representatives apportioned in this act to such State shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall have to the whole number of male citizens twenty - one years of age in such State . </P> <P> A nearly identical provision remains in federal law to this day . </P> <P> Despite this legislation, in subsequent reapportionments, no change has ever been made to any state's Congressional representation on the basis of the Amendment . Bonfield, writing in 1960, suggested that "(t) he hot political nature of such proposals has doomed them to failure". Aided by this lack of enforcement, Southern States continued to use pretexts to prevent many blacks from voting until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 . </P>

Which amendment to the constitution forbids gender discrimination in voting