Voting Rights Act Escapes Absurd GOP Rebellion

More than forty years after hundreds of U.S. citizens paid for the Voting Rights Act with their blood in Selma, Montgomery, and Birmingham, thirty-three troglodytes in the House of Representatives still want to kill it. David Stout's story in the Times today gives far too much credit to the sponsors of four would-be poison pills disguised as amendments to the Voting Rights Act. One amendment would have reduced the life cycle of the Act from twenty-five years to ten (making it that much easier to eventually defeat); another would have removed the rule that ballots be printed bilingually when necessary; while the worst of them would have required the Justice Department to annually recertify the applicability of the Act to nine hundred districts across the country, rather than have those districts prove their own electoral fairness, a burden that would have decimated the ability of the Department of Justice to follow through on claims of infractions against the Act elsewhere.

Each was defeated, but not without hours of some of the worst posturing the floor of the House has seen this year. Georgia Republicans demanded, for example, that we "stop the insanity" of requiring local jurisdictions to print bilingual ballots, arguing that removing that portion of the law "would still allow local districts to print their own bilingual ballots if they want to; we just want the heavy hand of the federal government off our backs," while citing districts with low percentages of voters who request bilingual ballots as evidence that such ballots are unnecessary. This is a bit like arguing that we don't need federal laws requiring local police forces by saying "local jurisdictions can still have police forces if they want; we just don't think they should be mandatory."

When it comes to headlines, once again the Post triumphs over the Times. WaPo's "Voting Rights Act Elements Extended Despite GOP Infighting" appropriately highlights the fact that, as the accompanying story says, the Southern GOP "rebellion... threatened to become a political embarrassment." Compare to the Times' benign and nonthreatening "House Approves Renewal of Voting Rights Act."

The final paragraph of Stout's piece notes that,

One section [of the Voting Rights Act] requires a Justice Department review of any proposed changes to voting procedures to determine if they would be discriminatory. Nine states, most of them in the South, and parts of seven others are covered by that "preclearance" requirement.

Southern Republicans have been hopping mad over this rule since it was established; hence the proposed amendment that would shift the burden of proof onto the federal government to prove that local election rules are unfair, rather than the other way around. But what neither Times reporter Stout nor the Southern cavemen masquerading as lawmakers are telling you is that the Voting Rights Act has a "bail out" provision, allowing these states to opt out of the preclearance requirement so long as no complaints are filed against them over a ten year period.