49th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act

Forty-nine years ago today, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), taking an enormous step toward protecting the right to vote for all Americans. But last year, the “Felonious Five” conservative activist justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder cut out the heart of the VRA, Section 5, on the specious grounds that discrimination against voters by states no longer occurs in a post-racial America. One has to wonder what freakin’ planet these elitists live on.

If you want to see the VRA restored and Shelby County overturned, you are going to have to elect a Democratic House and Senate to do it. Your father’s Republican Party which helped to pass the VRA and always supported its re-authorization in years past, has been replaced by a radicalized extremist GOP.

Tea-Publicans have taken the opinion of the “Felonious Five” in Shelby County v. holder as a license to discriminate against “those people,” i.e., voters who tend to vote for Democrats. In fact, the very same day that Shelby County was announced, several former states of the Confederacy covered by Section 5 of the VRA immediately sought to infringe the rights of their citizens to vote.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) writes at the Huffington Post today, The Importance of Protecting Our Right to Vote: Reflecting on the Voting Rights Act of 1965:

Half a century ago the Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought an end to the era of Jim Crow by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. One year later the landmark legislation was strengthened and expanded when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law on Aug. 6, 1965. The Voting Rights Act prohibited discrimination in voting and, together with the Civil Rights Act, enshrines the principles upon which our nation was founded. These laws serve as a testament to all who sacrificed to work toward ending segregation and discrimination.

For nearly half a century the Voting Rights Act has stood as a central pillar in the protection of fair voting practices. Our nation now faces the greatest threat to voting rights since Reconstruction.

Last year the Supreme Court issued its decision in Shelby County v. Holder. The decision severely undermines the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act. Although legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives to address this flawed decision, Congress has yet to take action. Shelby County has allowed more than a dozen states with histories of voter discrimination to implement new restrictions on voting.

When it comes time for voting, voter suppression is far too prevalent throughout our country. We need not look further than our own state of Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott has made repeated attempts to purge the voter database, despite the fact that his attempt to do so in 2011 was suspended by the U.S. Department of Justice. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled just last month that Gov. Scott’s administration violated federal law when he tried to purge non-citizens from the voter rolls immediately prior to the 2012 presidential election.

Today we face an unsettling reality. Shelby County, one of many recent decisions by the Supreme Court that has disenfranchised American voters, made it easier for minorities to be discriminated against at the polls. Republicans in Congress, as well as in states across the country, have gone out of their way to make it more difficult for minorities, the elderly, and young people to vote. This is outrageous and should serve as a wake-up call to voters everywhere.

Our nation has the obligation to make it easier, not more difficult, for all American to vote. Instead of creating burdensome photo-ID requirements for voting, we should be expanding access to the polls through early voting and same-day registration. Instead of finding new ways to limit voting, we should be working day and night to ensure that every American has the opportunity to vote in person or through absentee ballot.

Voter discrimination has not disappeared, and Congress must act to put in place greater voter protections to ensure that all Americans can have their voices heard. I am proud to be a co-sponsor of the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014, which will take the necessary steps to address the flawed decision in Shelby County. I hope that Congress takes up this legislation very soon, because we cannot afford to let this issue slip from focus. Countless individuals have fought long and hard for the chance to vote on Election Day, and we must not allow the clock to turn back on decades of progress.

 On this 49th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act let’s commit ourselves to electing a Congress that will restore the VRA before its 50th anniversary next year. Hopefully next year we can celebrate a fully restored VRA, one that honors the sacrifice of all those who fought and died to secure to all Americans the right to vote.

UPDATE: Via Rick Hasen, a major new report issued by the National Commission on Voting Rights:

On the anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act and a year after the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v Holder decision gutted a vital protection of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the National Commission on the Voting Rights has released a new national report showing where and how that minority voters continue to be hurt by discrimination in the U.S. The report, Protecting Minority Voters: Our Work is Not Done challenges the Court’s rational that improvements in minority citizens’ rates of voting and voter registration and the success of minority candidates indicated that the coverage formula protecting minority voters was unconstitutionally outdated.

Among the Report Findings Between 1995–2014:

• Voting discrimination is a frequent and ongoing problem in the United States. There were about 332 successful voting rights lawsuits and denials of Section 5 preclearance by the U.S. Department of Justice and another ten non-litigation settlements.

• Formerly covered states in the South and Southwest stand out with some of worst records of voting discrimination–with Texas being at the top of the list. Texas stands out as having a remarkably high level of documented voting discrimination, including multiple state-level violations. And the States of Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina were not far behind.

• From this report, we can also see that voting discrimination takes a variety of forms. Discriminatory redistricting plans and at-large elections continue to prompt the most successful lawsuits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. However, there were also 48 successful lawsuits and ten non-litigation settlements relating to language translation and assistance.