by James Parks, May 2, 2006

A broad coalition—including the AFL-CIO, unions, civil rights groups, religious leaders, immigrant advocates and others—is fighting to defend our most basic civil right, the right to vote, by supporting legislation to reauthorize key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

A bipartisan group of members of the House and Senate on May 2 introduced the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments of 2006 (H.R. 9). The bill is named after the three civil rights leaders who each helped bring about the original act in 1965.

The bill’s sponsors include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). The House sponors include Reps. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Melvin Watt (D-N.C.).

“The need for the Voting Rights Act is as great now as it was 24 years ago” (the last time the act was renewed), said Sensenbrenner, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. He said the committee would hold hearings on the bill this week.

Passing the reauthorization “will make sure the doors of opportunity remain open for every citizen,” Reid said.

The bill would reauthorize three key provisions of the Voting Rights Act that will expire in August 2007. The law, arguably the most successful civil rights legislation ever passed, outlaws such atrocities as literacy tests and poll taxes to prevent people of color from voting and has helped ensure that people of color have an opportunity to achieve elective office.

The AFL-CIO and its partners in the Voting Rights Act Collaborative are asking their members to write their representatives in Congress to urge them to renew the act.

While the act’s prohibitions against racial discrimination in voting are permanent, certain critical provisions to enforce the law could expire next year. These provisions:

• Require certain states and many counties and townships throughout the country with significant language minority populations to provide bilingual election assistance, including bilingual ballots, election materials and poll workers. This section is becoming more important as increasing numbers of Latinos, Chinese and other Asians settle in communities throughout the nation. In Miami in 2002, Haitian American activists only could persuade local officials to place Creole speakers at certain precincts after citing the voting rights law.
• Require jurisdictions with histories of voter exclusion and disenfranchisement to prove to federal authorities that any proposed changes to voting laws or procedures will not negatively impact minority voters. Last year, Georgia legislators voted to require voters to pay $20 for a special card if they did not have photo identification. Although the U.S. Justice Department approved the change, a federal judge eventually ruled against the plan on constitutional grounds, likening it to a poll tax from the Jim Crow era.
• Allow the federal government to send federal examiners and observers to monitor elections.

Supporters of reauthorizing the provisions say that new methods such as ID card requirements, inaccessible polling places and election-day misconduct still restrict minority voting. Immigrant voter advocates and civil rights attorneys say many people again will be disenfranchised if Congress allows the three provisions to expire.

“The Voting Rights Act affects us all,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson told the AFL-CIO Convention last summer. “When Tom DeLay maneuvers congressional seats in Texas to bring in more anti-labor, anti-gender equality votes into Congress, it affects us all. When Georgia expands voter barriers and restrictions, and labor-suppressing schemes on the working poor, it affects us all.”

Leslie Fulbright of the San Francisco Chronicle writes that some conservative Republican members of Congress are lining up to oppose reauthorization:

The reauthorization continues to garner resistance. Some states and counties covered by the provision oppose federal oversight. And House Republicans have said requiring ballots to be printed in multiple languages divides the country, increases the risk of voter error and burdens taxpayers.

More than 50 conservative members of Congress signed a letter to (House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) asking him to oppose renewal of Section 203, saying bilingual ballots “encourage the linguistic division of our nation” and contradict “the requirement that immigrants need to demonstrate the ability to read and understand English in order to become naturalized citizens.”

The Miami Herald in an April 11 editorial answers the critics and explains straight out why the provisions must be renewed:

Reauthorization is necessary because voting discrimination is still a problem in elections across the country, albeit in ways more subtle and less overt than decades ago.

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