by James Parks, May 24, 2006

A group of Southern Republicans has stalled plans to renew key provisions of the Voting Rights Act before lawmakers recess for the Memorial Day holiday.

About 20 Republican House members—mainly from Georgia, Texas and Mississippi and led by Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia—claim some provisions of the act are no longer needed or impose a financial burden on states. Although House Republican leaders pledged early this month to push for a vote by Memorial Day, Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said last week there is no “commitment” on when the measure will come to the floor because of opposition from the Southern lawmakers.

Unless Congress acts soon, three key sections of the Voting Rights Act will expire in August 2007. The legislation needs to be renewed now, supporters say, because next year’s crowded congressional calendar may not allow the bill to complete the legislative hurdles before the act expires.

In a May 10 letter to members of Congress, AFL-CIO Legislative Director William Samuel said, “41 years after initial passage of the VRA, there is significant evidence that barriers to minority voter participation persist.” Samuel urged quick passage of the reauthorization, which now has 152 co-sponsors in the House and 43 in the Senate.

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

“Every election, we have lots of intimidation,” Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) told the Dallas Morning News. If current protections are allowed to expire, “the intimidation would be even more overt,” she said. “Unfortunately, we still have people who’d rather not have minorities vote.”

The Voting Rights Act outlawed such atrocities as literacy tests and poll taxes that prevented people of color from voting. It has enabled minorities to gain political power and propelled thousands of people of color into elective office. While the act’s prohibitions against racial discrimination in voting are permanent, important portions of the act could expire next year. These provisions:

• Require some locales to provide bilingual election assistance, including bilingual ballots, election materials and poll workers. In Miami in 2002, Haitian American activists persuaded local officials to place Creole speakers at certain precincts only after citing the voting rights law.
• Require jurisdictions with long 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, the Georgia legislature required 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 Voting Rights Act provisions say minority voting is still being restricted by ID card requirements, inaccessible polling places and election-day misconduct.

Earlier this month, Missouri’s Republican-dominated legislature passed one of the nation’s most restrictive voting bills, requiring voters to show government-issued photo ID cards before they can cast a ballot. Election officials estimate the new law could disenfranchise as many as 190,000 voters, mainly people of color, seniors and people with disabilities.

Many more people will be disenfranchised if Congress allows the three nonpermanent provisions of the VRA to expire, immigrant voter advocates and civil rights attorneys say.

This week, the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger laid out the case for renewing the act, especially Section 5, the portion that requires federal approval of proposed changes in voting laws:

If one wants to believe that issues of race do not color elections in Mississippi, look at the voter ID issue that has rent the legislature, with bitter fights over voting with clear racial overtones. The last congressional redistricting stalemated in the legislature over majority black voting-age populations, with a federal court deciding this ostensibly state issue. Someday, Section 5 will be an anachronism. Until then, it must stay.

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