Good News, Bad News, and Sad News

By the Editors

The Good News: Over forty years after its passage, a broad bipartisan consensus has emerged to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before several key provisions expire in 2007.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Voting Rights Act has transformed the country.  President Lyndon B. Johnson, as he signed the Act on August 6, 1965, reflected, “Three and a half centuries ago the first Negroes arrived at Jamestown. They did not arrive in brave ships in search of a home for freedom. They did not mingle fear and joy, in expectation that in this New World anything would be possible to a man strong enough to reach for it.  They came in darkness and they came in chains. And today we strike away the last major shackle of those fierce and ancient bonds. Today the Negro story and the American story fuse and blend.”

      President Johnson’s prediction was right. The Voting Rights Act, especially Section 5, swept away most of the barriers to representation for minorities by banning changes to voting laws in many jurisdictions without a “preclearance” (a check by a U.S. District Court or the U.S. Attorney General to ensure that the proposed change would not reduce the percentage of minority population in a district where minority voters previously were able to elect a candidate of choice). As a result, by the end of 1965, African-American voter registration in the country surged by 250,000. In the last 40 years, the number of African-American Members of Congress has risen from 5 to 39.

      Two months after the enactment of the Voting Rights Act, President Johnson signed the Immigration Act of 1965, and thereby ushered in an age of unprecedented immigration from non-white countries.  To ensure that those new immigrants would be able to vote easily once they became citizens, the Voting Rights Act, in Section 203, made bilingual voting materials mandatory in jurisdictions with significant language minority populations who have limited English proficiency and higher rates of illiteracy than the general population.

      Taken together, Sections 5 and 203 of the Voting Rights Act have completely changed America’s political landscape.  There is now significant diversity in the ranks of this country’s elected politicians.

   Republicans and Democrats alike understand and appreciate all that the Voting Rights Act has done, and reauthorization of the law seems extremely likely.

      The Bad News: A major battle is brewing between some African-American leaders and others (including other African-American leaders) regarding how best to reauthorize Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

      The fight began in 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court (in Georgia v.Ashcroft) reinterpreted Section 5 to say that changes in redistricting plans are now permissible even if those changes will diminish a district’s percentage of black voters. It was fine, the Supreme Court essentially held, for a redistricting plan to create districts with fewer African-Americans if such a plan were to create districts with more Democrats, since Democrats support minority interests anyway.

      Some African-American leaders, in response to Georgia v. Ashcroft, are demanding that Congress reauthorize Section 5, but restore the emphasis on the importance of maintaining the

percentage of black voters in a district.

      Other African-American leaders – including Harvard professor HenryLouis Gates – do not wish to reverse the Georgia v. Ashcroft holding. They believe that African-Americans should desire and support redistricting plans that might dilute their strength in some districts if that would be a vehicle to increase the numbers of elected African-American-sympathetic politicians in other districts.

      In a New York Times editorial, Dr. Gates observed, “The creation of black-majority districts was necessary when the Democratic Party had a monopoly in the South, and white would almost never vote for blacks.But since 1990, districting deals between Republicans and black Democrats have lead to political mischief. Shepherding black voters into black districts left other districts lily-white – and skewed to the right.  You saw the consequences in 1994, when the House [of Representatives] came under Republican control.”

      To put it succinctly, reauthorization, with no modification, of Section 5 may lead to fewer African-Americans, but more Democrats, in Congress.  Modification of Section 5 (to restore the original intent of the passage) may lead to more African-Americans, but fewer Democrats, in Congress.

      Congress has held hearings about the status of Section 5 following Georgia v. Ashcroft.  Our elected officials are weighing the arguments. The future of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is uncertain.

      The Sad News:  It was not supposed to be this way.  Section 5 was designed to be a “temporary” measure, an extraordinary mechanism to help force parts of the country, especially the South, to stop making it difficult for minorities to vote.  When the Section first expired in 1970, Congress reauthorized it for 5 more years.  In 1975, Congress approved another 12 year extension.  In 1982, the Act was extended 25 more years.

      The fact that Congress has readily reauthorized Section 5, and the rest of the Voting Rights Act, in the past and probably will do so again before the 2007 deadline is, of course, something to celebrate.  The old segregationist attitudes of 1950’s America are long gone.  No prominant public figure – from the Right or the Left -- seeks to repudiate the Voting Rights Act.

      However, the fact that Section 5, and other parts of the Voting Rights Act, now must be reauthorized, for the fourth time, before 2007 is a sad commentary on the rate of racial progress in the nation. Over 40 years after President Johnson declared that the Voting Rights Act would strike away the last shackle of racism, virtually everyone acknowledges that the hammer is still needed.