Voting Rights Act Faces Uphill Fight in Senate After Emotional Approval in House

by James Parks, Jul 14, 2006

Even though the House renewed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) by an overwhelming margin Thursday, the bill still faces an uphill battle in the U.S. Senate. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) says he wants the committee to consider the bill this week, but Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has not scheduled floor action.

At the same time, some senators, such as Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), are echoing the issues raised by a gang of extremist southern conservative House members who hijacked the legislation for three weeks. The politicians offered four amendments that would have gutted the critical portions of the law, but all the amendments were defeated easily.

However, unlike in the House, one determined senator can hold the legislation hostage through a filibuster. That’s why the AFL-CIO is asking members to continue to contact their senators and tell them to vote for S. 2703, the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) urged his colleagues to act quickly to extend the VRA, since published reports say Frist plans to adjourn the Senate on Sept. 27.

…this new adjournment date means the Senate has only eight more weeks in which it will be in session. Eight weeks is 40 business days. Subtract Labor Day, and there are only 39 days. Subtract Mondays and Fridays—which aren’t real work days in this Republican Congress—and there are just 23 legislative days left.

…with only 23 real legislative days remaining and a list of things we need to accomplish that’s a mile long, we need to get to work.

The original timetable for extending the Voting Rights Act was May. But here we are—with only eight weeks remaining—and there is still no specific date set for debate.

Frist has said he expects the Senate to pass the bill before the session ends this year.

The bill would renew for 25 years key sections of the VRA, including those that require language assistance and give the federal government authority to review changes in voting rules in states with a history of discrimination.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says this about the vote:

The AFL-CIO calls on the Senate to quickly pass the Voting Rights Act extension and reject any attempt to water down its vital protections.

We cannot return to the dark days of persistent voter discrimination that plagued this nation for many generations. We need to do more to help Americans exercise their fundamental right to vote—not less. The future of our nation depends on it.

Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), which includes the AFL-CIO, also pointed out that the VRA will continue to be necessary in guaranteeing Latino citizens—the fastest-growing ethnic group in the nation—their right to vote. And while many public debates about minorities exclude Asian Americans, they also remain a growing population in some of the nation’s biggest, most diverse cities, Henderson says.

Says Juan Andrade, of the Comité César Chávez, a community-based project of Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN):

I know about the importance of voting. There are many people in my community who still cannot vote; therefore, when I vote, I vote for not only myself but my entire community.

The language assistance provision is critical as the U.S. becomes more multicultural, says Andrew Friedman, a fellow at the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy:

Democracy in a multicultural society requires affirmative measures on the part of the government to ensure fairness to and inclusion of all U.S. citizens.

The House on Thursday approved the VRA renewals by a whopping 390–33 vote. All the “nay” votes were from Republicans. Before passing the bill, an emotional debate took place, raising the nation’s history of racial discrimination and the ongoing battle to overcome it.

The most moving moment in the House debate came when Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) showed a photo of the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., where state troopers attacked Lewis and hundreds of other unarmed, peaceful marchers with fire hoses and batons. Lewis, who sustained severe head and nerve injuries in that beating, said:

I was beaten; I have a concussion; I almost died. I gave a little blood, but some of my colleagues gave their very lives.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) reminded her colleagues that before the VRA was passed in 1965, voting was denied to millions of people of color:

… when I was born, my grandparents could not express themselves in the constitutional right to vote. Today we have an opportunity to affirm the very basic values of America, and that is to reaffirm every American’s right to vote without barrier or bar.

Jackson Lee also denounced an amendment offered by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) to eliminate the provision requiring language assistance:

I ask my good friend what he would do for the young soldier who is an immigrant, who is a legal permanent resident and has offered his life in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan and who has managed to make legal permanent residents and then citizens of his own family who have a language barrier because of just recently coming to this country, maybe conversant enough to become citizens, but not enough to read a ballot.

This amendment is unconstitutional and un-American.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) said this:

The Voting Rights Act was enacted to break down the walls built by Jim Crow, not build them back up. There is no difference between a poll tax, a literacy test or an English proficiency requirement as a precondition to voting. All are draconian and targeted efforts to block a specific group of people from voting and, I might add, people who are registered voters and citizens of the United States.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), one of the chief sponsors of the bill, invoked the words of former President Ronald Reagan when he signed the last VRA extension in 1982:

… among the keepsakes of my public service that I most cherish is one of the signing pens President Ronald Reagan used when enacting the 1982 Voting Rights Amendments into law.…I would urge my colleagues to reflect upon President Reagan’s eloquent remarks on this occasion: “Yes, there are differences over how to attain the equality we seek for all our people. And sometimes amidst all the overblown rhetoric, the differences seem to be bigger than they are. But actions speak louder than words. This legislation proves our unbending commitment to voting rights. It also proves that differences can be settled in a spirit of good will and good faith.”

And Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) reminded the House the need for the VRA is as great today as it was 40 years ago:

Just two weeks ago, the United States Supreme Court confirmed that fact when it rejected Texas’s redistricting map because it disenfranchised thousands of Latino voters. We know why we have the Voting Rights Act. We know what history has taught us. We believe that we must look to the future, and we must not only reaffirm our belief in the Voting Rights Act, but reaffirm it completely and absolutely.

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