WASHINGTON — If the push to rework the Voting Rights Act turns into a partisan shouting match, civil rights activists know they’ve already lost.
From that perspective, this week’s mostly low-key hearings in the House and Senate showed the potential for a return of federal pre-clearance for new voting laws in some form. But the careful comments of key U.S. House Republicans on Thursday again revealed a sentiment that the current tools to prevent voting discrimination – even without a pre-clearance formula, yanked out by the U.S. Supreme Court last month – are enough.
“Now, it’s important to note that under the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County (v. Holder) other very important provisions of the Voting Rights Act remain in place, including Sections 2 and 3,” said House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
Goodlatte, Constitution subcommittee chairman Trent Franks, R-Ariz., and their allied witnesses emphasized the ability to challenge a discriminatory voting law in court under Section 2 and federal courts’ ability to impose pre-clearance on jurisdictions that pass intentionally discriminatory voting laws under Section 3.
Since 1965 Georgia and other states and jurisdictions with a history of overt discrimination had to submit every voting law change to the federal government for pre-approval before it could be enacted. The Supreme Court decided in June that the formula used to require pre-clearance in those areas was unconstitutionally outdated.
via U.S. House takes first look at Voting Rights Act rewrite | www.myajc.com.
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