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print thisVoting Rights Act on slow road to renewal
By LAUREN MARKOE
Special to The State
WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders — Republicans and Democrats alike — are aiming to renew key sections of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 before they leave for their July 4 break.
Supporters include polar political opposites from South Carolina, such as Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, of Springdale, and Democrat U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, of Columbia. The pair share views on benefits, and each gains politically in the way districts are drawn.
The renewal, however, is not coming as quickly as expected.
Democrats and Republicans agree on the basic tenets of the act, which removed obstacles to voting that had prevented millions of black people from exercising the right.
But some reject renewal without changes on some key issues, including bilingual ballots and the formula that determines which areas have problematic voting rights records.
A group of about 20 House Republicans, for example, say the section dealing with “pre-clearance” tests must change. The test, which mostly applies to Southern states, is based on voting statistics from the 1964 election and does not take into account the tremendous strides against discrimination since, the group says.
The pre-clearance section requires certain areas of the nation, including all of South Carolina, to obtain approval from the U.S. Department of Justice or a federal court before changing election practices that could affect the rights of minority voters.
Led by Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Georgia Republican, the group, demanding a “modernization” of the section, has managed to sideline the legislation, at least temporarily.
Others who object to sections of the act that require bilingual ballots in certain voting districts where a language other than English is commonly spoken also want to prevent passing the act “as is.”
Those who study congressional politics say a bill that deals with the volatile topic of race is one Republicans would like to remove from the spotlight as early as possible during an election year.
Both Democrats and Republicans expect that renewal of these controversial sections will happen — but it is proving more difficult than either party expected. And it frustrates those who see the act as an indispensable shield protecting minority voters.
COMMON GROUND
Congressional leaders had hoped to have the act updated — for the next 25 years — by Memorial Day. Parts of the act expire by 2007. It appeared to be among the easiest items to check off the congressional agenda this spring.
Despite agreement across party lines, however, the act has not yet passed.
Clyburn and Wilson — a study in political contrasts — are two who support renewal as is. The chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and the staunch conservative represent parts of the Columbia area in Congress, and both want the act updated fast, and basically unchanged.
To Clyburn, a veteran of the Civil Rights movement, the act remains an essential bulwark against discrimination.
“You don’t have to go back to 1965 to find evidence. Take Florida in 2000,” he said, referring to the presidential election in which Florida voting officials were accused of intentionally keeping blacks from the polls.
Wilson disagrees with Clyburn on the election of 2000, but he still calls the act necessary. And he favors renewal of a controversial section that some of his conservative colleagues consider outdated.
Wilson said he has seen how the pre-clearance section helps assure that local governments looking to change their election laws “take into account minority voting interests.”
Lawmakers comfortable with the outlines of their districts are likely to approve of the new act congressional leaders want to send to the House and Senate floor. The bill affirms the status quo in that it endorses “majority-minority districts,” those drawn so that either a Republican or a nonwhite candidate has an advantage.
Voter registration in South Carolina’s 6th District, for example, is more than 57 percent nonwhite. Clyburn, an African-American, is its representative.
Nearly three-quarters of registered voters in the 2nd District, represented by Wilson, are white.
Other S.C. Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, have expressed a desire to revise pre-clearance requirements to update the formulas that determine whether a jurisdiction is subject to pre-clearance.
But Graham is typical of many in the GOP when he says that he is prepared to vote for renewal of the act even if pre-approval rules don’t change.
THE RIGHT TO VOTE
In South Carolina, the question of the act’s renewal is particularly relevant. The state is one of nine in which pre-clearance provisions apply in every county, city and town.
This means no changes can be made to electoral practices without federal approval, such as moving to an at-large system of selecting local council members.
For those who bear the battle scars of the civil rights movement, such as Floyd Davis, the forces that compelled passage of the act in 1965 persist.
It was a state case, “South Carolina v. Katzenbach,” that provided the Supreme Court the opportunity in 1966 to affirm the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act.
Under a weakened act, said Davis, a Hartsville NAACP official, the state’s blacks could lose a powerful guarantor of their voting rights.
“Without the NAACP pushing for the right to vote, it would still be as bad in some places as it used to be,” he said.
Some leaders disagree.
Republican U.S. Rep. Henry Brown, of Hanahan, says such fears are unfounded. Times have changed, he said, and South Carolina has moved far away from its ugly history of discrimination.
“We just can’t continue to live in the past,” he said.
He favors updating rules so registration information from a more recent election — perhaps 1996 — determines whether pre-clearance is required.
That would show more black people are registered and vote, allowing South Carolina jurisdictions to drop paperwork requirements of compliance and avoid the stigma of federal oversight.
Voter registration rates have improved markedly for blacks and often are comparable to those for whites, statistics show.
In 1965, for example, just more than a third of South Carolina blacks were registered, while about three-quarters of eligible whites were.
More than thirty years later, 56.7 percent of eligible blacks were registered to vote, while 61.8 percent of eligible whites were.
Whatever their take on the Voting Rights Act, few deny it has done more than any law in U.S. history to protect voting rights.
When President Johnson signed the act into law, a slew of barriers to voting — most commonly applied to blacks in the South — were outlawed immediately. Those included literacy and other tests that whites were not required to pass. The act also allows the U.S. attorney general to appoint election monitors to assure compliance with the 15th Amendment, which says voting rights cannot be denied based on race.
The act also directs the federal government to scrutinize practices that could depress minority turnout.
In Kilmichael, Miss., in 2001, for example, white officials canceled an election when a group of black candidates signed up to run. The Justice Department ruled the action a violation of the Voting Rights Act and required the election to go forward. It resulted in the town’s first black mayor and the integration of the Board of Aldermen.
