Voting Rights Act renewal stirs debate
Posted on Sunday, July 2, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/159279/
WASHINGTON — Civilrights groups blame a “small band of extremists” for sending Congress home for the Fourth of July without renewing one of the nation’s bulwarks of freedom, the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Republican Rep. John Boozman of Arkansas is one of those they blame.
But Boozman considers his objections to renewing the act in its current form as more “common sense” than “extremist.”
He is among the Southern Republicans who question the need for the Justice Department’s special supervision of some Southern states in all matters relating to voting and elections. He also challenges the act’s requirement that ballots be bilingual in areas where population statistics suggest a need.
Those are the issues Republican lawmakers have used to persuade their leadership to keep renewal of the act from going to the House floor.
The delay in renewal has become one of the surprise developments in a congressional session in which debate over immigration policies had already brought race-related sensitivities to the fore. Renewal of the act, which is set to expire in 2007, had previously been seen as noncontentious and enjoying substantial bipartisan support in both chambers.
“I think it is a very important piece of legislation and one that has done a tremendous amount of good for this country,” Boozman said of the Voting Rights Act.
But after 40 years, Boozman said, it might need some changes to reflect progress in the South. A lot of the old ra- cially discriminatory practices are gone, he said.
Similar views are articulated by conservative scholars such as Edward Blum of the American Enterprise Institute. Blum wrote a recent piece titled “An Insulting Provision: Congress is set to renew an outdated and unnecessary Voting Rights Act restriction that applies only to certain states.”
That is a reference to Section 5 of the 1965 legislation, which required nine states and parts of seven others to get “preclearance” from the Justice Department before making changes in voting procedures that could affect the participation of minority groups.
The nine states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
Practices such as poll taxes and literacy tests prompted the provision. Those practices no longer exist, proponents of changing the act say.
Such views have sparked a firestorm from the nation’s leading civil-rights groups. Julie Fernandes, senior counsel for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, calls it “the all is hunky-dory attitude.”
Talk of modernizing the Voting Rights Act, they contend, is doing nothing more than shielding attempts to gut it.
These groups insist attempts to hamper the voting rights of members of minority groups persist throughout much of the South, as well as in other parts of the nation.
A tally kept by the American Civil Liberties Union shows that since the Voting Rights Act was last renewed in 1982, it has helped bring 293 cases of voting discrimination in 31 states. The numbers range from a high of 145 in Georgia to one each in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio and Wyoming. The group cited two cases in Arkansas over that time. One of the main consequences of Section 5 has been court-supervised creation of congressional and other legislative districts in which members of minority groups can win election. Without such help, civil-rights groups say, minority-group voices in Congress would be almost nonexistent.
RISKS OF TINKERING Only 49 of 8, 047 elections in white-majority U. S. House districts have provided black winners since 1966, the University of Wisconsin’s David Canon testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Canon added that most of those “were in unusually liberal districts or some other idiosyncratic context.”
“The need for the act and continuation of the act is more than documented by the volume of testimony [to Congress ],” Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, added in a telephone interview.
Tinkering with the Voting Rights Act would be “a huge turning back of the clock. This has been one of the most successful civil-rights statutes in our nation’s history,” said Elliot Mincberg, spokesman for People for the American Way.
Blum argues otherwise.
“Unlike Section 5, the most important provisions of the Voting Rights are permanent, such as the ban on literacy tests and grandfather clauses. Once these barriers were eliminated in the South, black voter registration soared,” he wrote.
Jack Pitney, a specialist on congressional Republicans at Claremont McKenna College in California, said the party needs to be careful about how it handles the debate.
The law was previously renewed in 1970, 1975 and 1982. This is the first time the issue has come before a majority-Republican Congress.
“It’s not that they are going to lose a huge share of the African-American vote, because they don’t have a large share of the African-American vote to begin with,” he said. What the party could end up doing, he said, is providing more incentive for black voters to turn out and vote against it.
And, he said, Republicans do risk the gains that they have made with Hispanics. NOT ABOUT IMMIGRATION
Civil-rights groups see a throwback to literacy tests in the calls for elimination of bilingual ballots.
Boozman doesn’t.
“As you become a citizen, you are supposed to learn the language,” said the 3 rd District congressman, a vehement opponent of immigration proposals that resemble amnesty.
Liberals such as Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, countered in a statement: “Ballots in languages from Spanish to Japanese to Lakota help American citizens cast informed votes and give them confidence in the voting process.”
Opponents of renewal are hoping to benefit from the emotions of this year’s immigration debate, some groups contend.
“It is deeply unfortunate that a small band of members have hijacked this bill by waving the red cape of ‘ illegal immigration, ’” Janet Murguia, president of National Council of La Raza, said in a statement.
“To be perfectly clear, this is not an immigration issue, it is about helping U. S. citizens who have both the right and the duty to vote.” Similarly, Democratic Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas said he agrees that all immigrants should be required to learn English but said there are many already here who have become working and tax-paying citizens. “They are entitled to vote,” he said. Ross said he supports renewal of the act with the preclearance and bilingual-ballot provisions as they stand now.
RIGHT TO VOTE Also taking that view were Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Reps. Marion Berry and Vic Snyder, all Democrats. “Until we can ensure a free and open democracy for all, we must reauthorize the Voting Rights Act and resist efforts to weaken this critical piece of legislation,” Berry said in a statement. “It is critical we uphold Section 5 protections until every state in this country can prove it has no record of discriminatory actions. With the U. S. Justice Department issuing more than 1, 000 objections to voting practices over the past 20 years, it is clear discrimination still exists in our political system.”
As for the language tests, Berry said, “As new U. S. citizens make the transition into American society and culture, we must continue to ensure that legal U. S. citizens maintain their ability to participate in the political process.”
Lincoln said she saw “no justification for changes at this time.”
Fellow Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor said in an interview that he wants renewal of the act but would be willing to consider changes in any provisions that have proven “antiquated.”
He added: “To me, the ballot itself could be in English, but the instructions might be offered in other languages.”