Voting Rights Act section that singles out South may be abolished

[merh]

Source: Los Angeles TImes

Voting Rights Act section that singles out South may be abolished
Supreme Court justices appear to be ready to strike down Section 5,
which requires special election supervision for many Southern states.
By David G. Savage
10:57 AM PDT, April 29, 2009

Reporting Form Washington -- The fate of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act looked to be in doubt today as Supreme Court justices questioned whether the Southern states still need special supervision to prevent them from discriminating against black voters.

"Are Southerners more likely to discriminate than Northerners?" asked a skeptical Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

Is the "sovereignty of Georgia" entitled to less respect than "the sovereign dignity of Ohio? . . . Does the United States take that position today?" said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, pressing a lawyer for the Justice Department who was defending the Voting Rights Act.

The comments and questions during the hourlong argument suggested a majority of the justices are prepared to strike down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This provision requires many Southern states, counties and school districts to get advance approval from the Justice Department before making changes in their election rules. These rules range from the location of polling places to the makeup of districts in the state legislature.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-civil-rights30-2009apr30,0,5360219.story

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This is not good, this provision of the law has been very beneficial - it has protected the rights of minorities for years and is still necessary.

Congress needs to correct the law, extend Section 5 to the entire country. -
"Why didn't (Congress) extend Section 5 to the entire country?" asked Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr."


.

[joeybee12]

1. I'll answer your question, Roberts, "Yes!"

Stupid question from an ideologue dolt.

[SCantiGOP]

4. i'll do better than you

As a lifelong resident of South Carolina I can say absolutely Yes. There's a reason the South went from Democratic to Republican in the span of about twenty years - it was the Voting Rights Act of 1964.

[saigon68]

15. ROBERTS is still a pandering Right Wing nut-job

[bluestateguy]

2. "Are Southerners more likely to discriminate than Northerners?"

Yes they are.

[annabanana]

3. If they're going to go that way.. I say extend it nationwide..

I've got NO problem with that...

[Xithras]

5. Umm...Justice Alito. It DOES apply to the entire country. Who does this guys research?

Southern states are the only states covered in total, but Section 5 is also applied to towns and counties across the country in states ranging from New Hampshire to New York (the Bronx) to California, and quite a few others. It can be applied to ANY city or county that is found by a court to engage in racially biased voting practices. It's hardly discriminatory against the south.

And, for what it's worth, ANY jurisdiction can request to be exempted from it. All a county has to do (even if it's in a covered state) is to demonstrate that it has policies and practices in place to protect minority voters, and go 10 years without any court actions for discriminatory voting practices. A number of Virginia counties have already been exempted from the requirements under these provisions. Most southern counties could easily be exempted...if they really cared enough to try.

[merh]

6. Doesn't the article make you wonder if the DOJ responded

to Alito, if they know what you just posted?

[Xithras]

7. Depends on what their goal is.

If the DOJ wants to see Section 5 overturned, they might well have kept their mouth shut.

If section 5 only applied to the southern states, it would have been overturned decades ago on equal representation grounds. As written, it currently applies to ANY voting district in the country with a proven history of voter disenfranchisement, if a court finds that special protections are needed. The south was included when it was written simply because the region had a long history of that kind of abuse. Since passage, many other areas across the country have been added because of proven discriminatory activities, and some areas in the south have been REMOVED because they have proven that special oversight for past abuses is no longer needed.

As a law, it applies to the entire nation equally.

[merh]

8. Holder told a group in Selma during a speech in March that one of

his most important tasks is to protect the voting rights of minorities.

Let's hope he means it.

[struggle4progress]

9. High court weighs changes to landmark civil rights law

Source: AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US Supreme Court appeared divided Wednesday while debating whether to invalidate key parts of the landmark Voting Rights Act protecting the rights of minorities at the ballot box.

At issue is a provision of the law that requires the Justice Department to preapprove any changes to voting districts, polling locations or election procedures in nine southern states which have significant African-American populations.

Such oversight is required only in isolated districts of seven other US states.

The Voting Rights Act was first approved in 1965 with key provisions added in 1982. Congress in 2006 overwhelmingly reauthorized the bill for another 25 years ...

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jZTgkszNUY_jG11NIziq9DSseldg

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Landmark Civil Rights Law in Jeopardy?
Court to Examine Whether Voting Rights Act Still Needed
By ARIANE de VOGUE
April 29, 2009

Some residents of a small Texas municipal district believe that a key section of landmark voting rights legislation -- created in 1965 to protect minorities in jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination -- is archaic and should be abolished ...

The lawsuit was prompted when some residents of the 3,500 community became infuriated that they had to spend two months and hundreds of dollars in legal fees just to move a polling place from a garage to a school. They support the broader goals of the Voting Rights Act but believe Section 5 should be scrubbed.

The case has civil rights lawyers worried. In briefs filed with the court, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund argues, "No statute in our history embodies America's commitment to democracy more clearly than the Voting Rights Act."

"We have Section 5 because of a history of jurisdictions doing everything conceivable to adversely affect the ability of African-Americans initially, and other minorities later, to exercise their right to vote," says John Payton, president of the Legal Defense Fund ... http://www.abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/SCOTUS/story?id=7326946&page=1

Minor dispute could have big impact on Voting Rights Act
By MARIA RECIO
McClatchy Newspapers

... The so-called "guts" of the law, Section 5, requires Justice Department pre-clearance of voting plans in nine Southern states - Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia - and portions of seven other states ...

Congress, on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis, renewed the Voting Rights Act in 2006 for 25 years. But the supporters of the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One, known as MUD, say that lawmakers overreached by maintaining the pre-clearance provision and that it is, therefore, unconstitutional ... The MUD challenged the law and lost in federal district court last year, leading to the appeal to the Supreme Court.

The case has become a cause celebre among 18 groups representing minorities, including the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which have weighed in on the case.

"What's at stake is the continued protection of minority voters from jurisdictions that try to replace one discriminatory mechanism with another," said Nina Perales, the MALDEF attorney representing Latino voters who live in the Austin municipal utility district ... http://www.kansascity.com/444/story/1167698.html

Justice Kennedy questions need for voting rule

... Lawyer Gregory Coleman, representing a Texas utility district that says Congress exceeded its powers, said the "unremitting and ingenious defiance" of voting rights targeted four decades ago in the provision — known as Section 5 — no longer exists.

"We are in a different day," insisted Coleman, who cited Obama's election in legal filings but did not mention it Wednesday.

Justice David Souter, among the justices defending the law, said Coleman's argument was "largely based on the assumption that things have significantly changed. … (That) seems … to deny the empirical reality."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested by her questions that she, too, believed the law was necessary to prevent "backsliding" on voting rights ... http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2009-04-29-scotus-voting-rights-act_N.htm

Supreme Court conservatives criticize voting rights law
Wed Apr 29, 2009 8:56pm BST
By James Vicini

... Roberts questioned whether the law would continue for too long. "I mean, at some point, it begins to look like the idea is that this is going to go on forever," he said.

Alito asked why Congress did not extend the law to the entire country. He called it odd the law covered the Bronx section of New York City, but not other boroughs like Brooklyn and Queens.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often holds the decisive vote on the closely divided court, appeared troubled by the law.

Kennedy said defenders of the law have a "very substantial burden" in showing the continuing need for the "great disparity in treatment" between states that are covered and those that are not covered by the law ... http://uk.reuters.com/article/usPoliticsNews/idUKTRE53S7MA20090429?sp=true

Supreme Court wrestles with Voting Rights Act case
Should states — including Georgia — be held to account for past discrimination?
By STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wednesday, April 29, 2009

... Georgia Rep. John Lewis, a Democrat from Atlanta and a leader of the Civil Rights Movement that resulted in the 1965 Voting Rights Act, submitted a brief opposing changes to the law.

Wednesday, Lewis listened to arguments from a seat in the middle of the Supreme Court, his first visit there to hear a case in his nearly 23 years in Washington.

“It reminded me of some of the same debate of 1965,” Lewis said later. “This Act is one of the most progressive pieces of legislation the country ever passed, and it changed America forever. We don’t need to go back.”

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican, submitted a personal brief opposing the continuation of Section 5 of the Act, saying that the election of a black president, among other things, shows that there’s no need for the law. Perdue hired a private lawyer to file the brief because the state’s attorney general refused to file it ... http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2009/04/29/supreme_court_voting_rights.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. JESUS H CHRIST

not that I am shocked!

[imdjh]

11. There is a case to be made that it's a bit out of touch

It really should apply to everyone if it's going to apply to anyone.

It was written to address skin color, but economics was a huge part of skin color thus the law doesn't recognize similar situations where power lines are drawn on something other than skin color. At-large elections can guarantee that a sizable group within a district will never elect a dog catcher even if that group isn't defined by skin color.

It hasn't stopped gerrymandering, either "good" or bad. Right here in Pinellas County, 25000 largely black voters are sectioned off and vote in a different congressional district across the bay. While that has the effect of "disenfranchising" Republicans in that district (guaranteeing a Democratic winner year after year) it also steals those black and mostly Democratic voters from Pinellas making it impossible for a Democrat to win in Pinellas. I think districts should be drawn logically and ethically, and if we lose a Dem seat, at least it will be in a fair design. I get uncomfortable when Democrats make deals for districts with Republicans.

[defendandprotect]

12. The way forward certainly isn't backwards . . . GOP attempts to undermine this

and the right wingers on the court seemingly anxious to rip it apart, convince
me even further that the law should remain intact.

One court has already rejected this request -- Congress has reapproved it for another
25 years --

Americans and especially DU'ers should begin to consider the connections between the
passage of The Voting Rights Act and the beginnings of the use of computers ---
the large ones having come in first in the mid-1960's to be used by corporate-media
to predict and call elections --

the electronic voting machines came in during the late 1960's --

IMO, every Republican win since then is in question - including Nixon/Humphrey.

It also has to be recognized that corporate-media was playing along even back then.

Have we recovered yet from the shock of Fox News calling the election for Bush?

Elements of a conspiracy

How Bush's man at Fox News worked to shape the outcome of the US election
By Kate Randall
17 November 2000
In the early morning hours of November 8, Fox News Channel declared that the pivotal state of Florida had gone for George W. Bush. At 2:16 a.m. Fox announced that the Texas governor had won the state, thus securing the 271 electoral votes needed to win the presidential election. The other television networks followed suit in a matter of minutes. The call was subsequently withdrawn, and to date the Florida outcome remains undecided.

The individual responsible for recommending that Fox call Florida for Bush was John Ellis, who led the network's decision desk. Ellis was not a disinterested party in the presidential election, but the first cousin of the Republican candidate and his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Details emerging since Election Day concerning Ellis's role in the network's decision to call Florida for Bush raise serious questions as to whether his actions and Fox News's complicity constituted not only a violation of the democratic rights of the electorate, but a criminal conspiracy.

Ellis makes no bones about his Republican leanings and his partisan support for Bush. And according to his own account of his election night activities, contained in an article in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine, he was in constant communication with his cousins George W. and Jeb Bush.

Shortly after 6 p.m. two waves of exit polls from the Voter News Service (a consortium set up by the major TV networks and Associated Press) showed the Florida vote going for Democratic candidate Al Gore. John Ellis received a call from the Bush campaign in Austin and told them the bad news. At 7:52 p.m. the major networks, including Fox, called Florida for Gore.

http://www.janrainwater.com/htdocs/FoxNews.htm

[New Dawn]

13. Increase the size of the Court and stack it.

[mbperrin]

14. Ahh, who needs civil rights anyway? Hey, look, it's the swine flu!

No, make that the North American flu!

Or the Cuban missile crisis!

Or imminent attacks from North Korea! Or Iraq! Or Iran! Or Mexico! (Hey - the North American flu gives us a two for one! Disease AND a reason to hate Mexicans for starting it!!!)

Well.