Report: Minorities Still Face Bias at Voting Booth

by James Parks, May 28, 2006

Although the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed barriers that kept people of color from voting, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, minority voters continue to face discrimination across the country. A series of reports by the Voting Rights Act Collaborative, a coalition of civil rights groups, including the AFL-CIO, shows widespread voting rights violations in states in which the Voting Rights Act applies.

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.

Opponents of the renewal claim voting discrimination is a thing of the past, but the state-by-state reports show otherwise. Here is a snapshot of some of the abuses and violations since the act was passed in 1965 and renewed in 1982:

• Although Arizona has discontinued the use of its English-only literacy test, discrimination against voters who do not speak English continues. In 2004, Arizona voters adopted Prop. 200, which has made it increasingly difficult for some citizens, particularly elderly American Indians, to register or vote because they don’t have required identification, including birth certificates and other federal or state forms of identification. The U.S. Justice Department has rejected four statewide redistricting plans in Arizona, including one as recently as 2002, because they would have discriminated against Latinos and American Indians.
• 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.
• In Mississippi, the state with the highest percentage of African American citizens, no black has ever been elected to statewide office. Since 1969, the Justice Department has stopped proposed voting changes in the state 169 times because they would deny black voting rights. The proposed changes involved election districts for Congress, the state Legislature, most of the county governing boards in the state and many of the cities and school boards. In addition, federal observers have been sent to locations in Mississippi to observe elections on 548 separate occasions since 1966, far more times than in any other state.
• In the past 40 years, South Dakota has become a battleground for American Indian voting rights. Since 1966, 17 lawsuits have been filed against the state claiming voting rights were denied to American Indians. The litigation has included challenging state legislative redistricting plans, opposing at-large elections for school districts and vindicating the right of American Indians to vote in a sanitary district election. In case after case, the state raised the “reservation” defense, arguing that because American Indians’ loyalty was to tribal elections they did not care about participating in state elections. But the courts uniformly rejected this argument.
• Florida has a well-documented history of voter discrimination against language minority groups. The discrimination has been particularly prevalent in areas with growing numbers of people who speak languages other than English, including Miami-Dade County and much of central Florida. Many counties in Florida use at-large election schemes to dilute minority voting strength and the state also has repeatedly sought to remove valid voters from the voter rolls in a manner that disproportionately impacts black voters.

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 Voting Rights Act reauthorization, which now has 152 co-sponsors in the House and 43 in the Senate.

Several southern Republicans are holding up the legislation, claiming it is no longer needed and costs too much to administer.  

The AFL-CIO and its allies are asking their members to urge Congress to renew the act.

There are three provisions of the Voting Rights Act that could expire next year:

• Require some locales to provide bilingual election assistance, including bilingual ballots, election materials and poll workers.
• 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.
• Allow the federal government to send federal examiners and observers to monitor elections.

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