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We still need Voting Rights Act

Sunday, July 2, 2006 6:49 AM CDT

The Voting Rights Act has been protecting minority voting rights for 41 years and, contrary to widespread and Internet-fed rumors, the fundamental right of minorities to vote is not in danger. But some of the more controversial enforcement provisions of the act must be reviewed and renewed by next year. Advocates are hoping for a 25-year extension.

No problem, thought leaders of the elephant party. After a stunning 33-1 landslide endorsement from the House Judiciary Committee, House Republican leaders expected easy passage for the measure.

House GOP leaders even hoped to use the bill's passage for a big election-year outreach to minority voters. This would have followed the noble tradition of the late Senate Republican Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, among other Republicans who helped push President Lyndon B. Johnson's civil rights legislation to passage in the 1960s despite opposition from southern segregationist Democrats and Dixiecrats.

But, House GOP leaders abruptly cancelled their scheduled debate and vote last Wednesday (June 21). A rebellion broke out, mainly over two issues: the law's special requirements for certain states and districts, mostly in the old segregated South, and the law's requirements that foreign-language ballots and interpreters be provided in precincts where substantial numbers of voters are struggling with English.

That language issue is an odd spillover from the ongoing debate over illegal immigration and, in my view, has no rational place in a debate about voting rights. After all, voters are citizens, regardless of their origins, and any assistance that helps citizens exercise their right to vote should be applauded, not exploited by demagogues.

Even so, the English-only lawmakers provided new and unexpected allies for the defenders of states' rights, bringing the House process to a screeching halt and complicating matters in the Senate, where Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) had planned to bring up an identical bill this week.

That's OK. This country needs to debate like this every so often, so we can measure how much racial progress we have made as Americans and how we can best make more progress.

The Voting Rights Act's most controversial provision requires nine states with a documented history of poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation and other discrimination against minority voters to receive "pre-clearance" from the Department of Justice before they can make any changes in their election laws or procedures.

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) became the point man in that argument, saying it was unfair in this day and age to single out Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia (as well as some individual districts in other states).

Yet, one need only peruse through some of the approximately 1,000 cases upon which the Justice Department has acted since the Voting Rights Act was last renewed in 1982 to find plenty that has kept the department's attorneys busy.

In 2001, for example, the all-white board of aldermen in Kilmichael, Miss., just happened to cancel the town's local elections only three weeks before Election Day, just as it was becoming apparent that the town's first black mayor and council members might be elected. The aldermen, elected at large, wanted the delay so they could re-map the town into districts, which would have protected some board seats held by whites. That wasn't a good enough reason for the Justice Department, which rejected the change.

In 2003, election officials in suburban Harris County, outside Houston, failed to provide bilingual assistance to Vietnamese voters, who had grown to almost 2 (two) percent of the county population. The Justice Department and Asian American legal assistance organizations worked out an agreement with the county that resulted in language help at the polls and other reforms. In the wake of those changes, Harris County elected its the first Vietnamese candidate, Democratic businessman Hubert Vo, to the state legislature in November 2004.

Outside the South, you have cases like the South Dakota gerrymander that packed Native Americans into one state legislative district to limit their political influence. Although the state ignored its obligation to submit voting changes for pre-clearance, the Voting Rights Act gave Indian residents the power they needed to sue the state in federal court and in 2004 they won.

The nine states designated by the act certainly are not the only parts of the country with a history of electoral shenanigans. But neither have those states been terribly inconvenienced by the Voting Rights Act, especially in comparison to the inconveniences minority voters were suffering before the act became law.

Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.