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House Rejects Republican End Run on Voting Rights |
The U.S. House today rejected a back-door move by House Republicans who oppose renewal of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) to gut one of the act’s key provisions. On a 254–167 vote, the representatives defeated an amendment that would have had disenfranchised millions of citizens who speak languages other than English.
Rep. Cliff Stearns’ (R-Fla.) amendment to H.R. 5672, an appropriations bill for several departments, would have prohibited the government from spending any money to enforce the bilingual election assistance provisions of the VRA.
In a letter to lawmakers, AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuel blasted those trying to deny citizens the right to vote:
The Stearns amendment…would effectively deny millions of language minority citizens the opportunity to cast an informed ballot. The Voting Rights Act has helped to make our nation’s democratic ideals a reality by ensuring that eligible voters can participate in the electoral process regardless of language ability.
More than 70 percent of those citizens who use language assistance are native born, according to the most recent information from the Census Bureau. Whether American Indian, Alaskan Native or Puerto Rican, these and other voters should not be denied the assistance they need to cast an informed ballot.
The vote came one day after the U.S. Supreme Court demonstrated the need for renewal of the Voting Rights Act by striking down a portion of Texas’ redistricting scheme engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, saying it violates the rights of Latino voters.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, said Latinos do not have an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choosing under the plan. DeLay’s plan involved shifting 100,000 Hispanics out of a congressional district represented by a Republican incumbent and into a new illogically configured district. Union leaders, civil rights activists and others have argued DeLay’s plan was an unconstitutional gerrymander under the VRA.
John Trasviña, interim president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), had this to say about the ruling:
The Texas Legislature chose to violate the integrity of the democratic process by intentionally removing 100,000 Latino voters from a district to try to control the election result. Today’s ruling affirms that manipulating election districts to disadvantage one race of voters violates the Voting Rights Act and undermines our democracy.
Earlier this month, experts told the Senate Judiciary Committee that providing language assistance for voters does not cost jurisdictions much money, as critics claim. Deborah Wright, the registrar-recorder/county clerk for Los Angeles County, said providing assistance “is slightly less than 10 percent of the county’s annual election expenses.”
Trasviña said that many complicated ballot provisions “demand a higher level of English language proficiency than do the naturalization requirements,” which require only a fifth-grade level of understanding.
To illustrate how complicated English ballots are, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) read part of a Colorado ballot. Senators joked during the question-and-answer session that even they had trouble understanding the “legalese” on ballots such as the one Kennedy read.
Even though the bill to reauthorize key sections of the Voting Rights Act has strong bipartisan support, House leaders allowed a group of Southern Republicans from Georgia, Texas and other states to hijack the legislation.
Many of those opposing the bill, led by Georgia Republicans Lynn Westmoreland and Charles Norwood, represent states with some of the most egregious records of discrimination in voting, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), which includes the AFL-CIO and several affiliated unions.
Texas tops the list of Voting Rights Act abusers, according to new reports from RenewtheVRA.org detailing violations in Texas and Georgia. Texas leads the nation in several categories of voting discrimination. In 1997, the Supreme Court held that Dallas County was wrong when it did not get Justice Department approval for a rule limiting poll worker selection that had a discriminatory impact on Latino citizens.
The reports indicate the Justice Department has objected to 120 voting changes in Mississippi, 107 in Texas and 91 in Georgia since the VRA was last renewed in 1982.
Many of Justice’s objections in Georgia involved election changes specifically designed to diminish African American voting power. For instance, the city of Macon carved up an area in April 1987 to remove an African American legislator from office, according to the Justice Department.
And twice (in November 1982 and December 1984), the city of McDonough diluted African American voting strength by fracturing the African American community into three districts.
The most glaring example of discrimination was in Long and Atkinson counties, where voters with Latino surnames had to prove their citizenship in 2004. In Atkinson County, they were forced to appear at hearings to provide proof of their citizenship.
The Voting Rights Act outlawed such atrocities as literacy tests and poll taxes that prevented people of color from voting. While the act’s prohibitions against racial discrimination in voting are permanent, important provisions of the law could expire next year.
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