Voting Rights Act appears doomed this year
Lewis DiuguidThe highly successful Voting Rights Act of 1965 may become a footnote in history this year if Supreme Court questioning this week is an indication of the landmark legislation’s fate.
It has lasted more than four times the number of years that Reconstruction was in place after the Civil War and has had a positive effect ensuring that African Americans can vote.
But the court will decide a key provision of the law, requiring nine states to first get permission from the federal government before making changes in voting procedures, The New York Times reports. Republican-led state legislatures throughout the country in recent years have instituted voter identification requirements, which serve to limit access to voting for a disproportionate number of minorities, the poor and older people.
The nine states under the Voting Rights Act have not had that “freedom.” Justices in their questioning have said the South has changed — largely because of the Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act and other laws.
Continuing the Voting Rights Act amounts to a “perpetuation of racial entitlement,” Justice Antonin Scalia was quoted as saying. Congress in 2006 reauthorized the provision for 25 years, which is being challenged in the court.
The most telling statement came from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who asked skeptically whether “the citizens in the South are more racist than citizens in the North.”
The correct answer is they aren’t, which indicates that rather than ending the key provision in the Voting Rights Act, it should be made to include all of the states in the Union.
George Hunsucker
Northland
2 months, 3 weeks agogood work lewis… you get 1 credit!!!
The voting Rights Act long ago outlived its purpose. It, like most other programs in DC, continues even though it is unneeded. What Constitutional right does the Federal Govt. have to tell states how to run THEIR elections? Only in your libville does this make sense in 2013. Yet you let pass voter intimidation that occurred in Philadelphia—where were your columns bemoaning this right to vote abuse lewis?
I anxiously await your columns on affirmative action and racial setasides, more discrimination, but to you libs it is “good” discrimination….
Mark Hastert
2 months, 3 weeks ago“Only in your libville does this make sense in 2013.”
Except that a city in the very county that brought suit had a documented violation in just the past few years.
Frankly, in the case of federal elections and in view of all the mischief by Republicans these past few years it should apply to all states not just the current ones.
Welcome to Libville, Population: growing