Welcome To Voting Rights Boot Camp : NPR

Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project, has watched elections in Georgia since not long after Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Last year, a divided Supreme Court gutted part of that law, throwing into chaos a system that had required Georgia and eight other states to ask for federal permission before making any election changes.

“We know that in Georgia it is having a negative impact in some of the jurisdictions, and one of them is Augusta-Richmond County,” McDonald said.

Before the Supreme Court ruled, the county planned to move up its elections from November to July. But the Justice Department objected to that plan, arguing it would depress black turnout. After the Supreme Court ruling, the county no longer had to ask for permission, so the change was made.

Already, the Atlanta Journal Constitution has found African-Americans are underrepresented in local governments across the state.

Not everyone at the training believes there’s reason for alarm in Georgia. Bryan Tyson, a young Atlanta lawyer, said the Supreme Court majority was right last year when it called out Congress for failing to update decades-old triggers in the Voting Rights Act.

“I haven’t really seen any sort of massive resurgence of problems as a result of that,” Tyson said. “Not really any major issues that I’ve seen as a result.”

Ann Brumbaugh is a lawyer who’s represented the state elections board and worked on a bipartisan rewrite of Georgia’s elections code. She sees more cause for concern.

“It makes some people more willing to do reckless things, and it makes other people less willing to do necessary things,” Brumbaugh said, explaining that not many eyes are focused on what small counties and towns are doing.

via Welcome To Voting Rights Boot Camp : NPR.