Supreme Court To Review Voting Rights Act

Here is some disturbing news for those of us opposed to voter suppression. The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case from Alabama that challenges Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. That is the section that requires some states (Alaska, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, South Carolina, and all but 14 counties in Virginia) to receive pre-clearance from the Justice Department before they can make any kind of change to voter laws or redistricting.

These states were required to get pre-clearance because they had a long history of suppressing votes (especially among minorities). In 2006, the House (with a 390 to 33 vote) and the Senate (with a 98 to 0 vote) reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, including Section 5, for another 25 years, and Republican President George W. Bush signed it into law. Obviously, members of both political parties saw the need to keep all of the law in place.

But now some right-wingers don't like Section 5 -- because it has prevented their efforts to suppress Democratic voters and to create unfair legislative districts. They have filed several court cases seeking to get Section 5 declared unconstitutional -- saying Congress has overreached it authority in renewing the provision for another 25 years. It is the case filed in Alabama that the court will hear in early 2013.

Edward Blum, director of the inappropriately named Project on Fair Representation, said:

"The America that elected and re-elected Barack Obama as its first African-American president is far different than when the Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965. Congress unwisely reauthorized a bill that is stuck in a Jim Crow-era time warp."

This is more than a little disingenuous. Using the election of President Obama to show the law was no longer needed might have some relevance, except for the fact that none of the states covered by Section 5 voted to re-elect the president (except for Virginia, who already has 14 counties exempted from Section 5). They are using the voting pattern of states not covered by Section 5 to prove they should also not be covered. That makes no sense at all, especially in light of recent voter suppression efforts in several of those states.

But the Supreme Court currently has a definite right-wing bent, and several members vote more for right-wing ideology than for constitutional concerns (like the right of every citizen to vote). In spite of the fact that racism is still alive and well in these states, it is very possible that this current Supreme Court could strike down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act -- and give the right-wingers who control those states a free hand to suppress votes of those they don't like, like minority voters.

I hope I'm wrong, but that's the way I see it right now. And I fully believe that eliminating Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act could be more damaging to our democracy than the Citizens United decision was.

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Old (racial) habits die hard: