DOJ objects to Texas redistricting, violates the Voting Rights Act

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

This is why I believe the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC) was wise to have legal counsel hire Bruce Adelson, a former Department of Justice Civil Rights Section compliance attorney, as a consultant for Voting Rights Act compliance. Mr. Adelson's team of compliance attorneys at the DOJ objected to the redistricting plan submitted by Arizona ten years ago for preclearance by the DOJ, finding evidence of "intentional discrimination." This guy knows his stuff. The AIRC is in capable hands.

Unlike the state of Texas (need I say more?). The Justice Department on Monday said that Texas' state House and congressional redistricting plans didn't comply with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), indicating they thought the maps approved by Gov. Rick Perry (R) gave too little voting power to the growing Latino population in the state. DOJ: Rick Perry's Texas Congressional Redistricting Map Violates Voting Rights Act | TPMMuckraker:

Officials with DOJ's Civil Rights Division said the proposed redistricting plan for the State Board of Education (SBOE) and the state Senate complied with the Voting Rights Act, but indicated they had concerns with the state House plan and the plan for congressional redistricting.

The federal government "[denied] that the proposed Congressional plan, as compared with the benchmark, maintains or increases the ability of minority voters to elect their candidate of choice in each district protected by Section 5," DOJ lawyers write in a filing. "Defendants deny that the proposed Congressional plan complies with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act."

[Read the Justice Department's court filing in the Texas redistricting case here.]

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A special three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. will ultimately decide whether the redistricting plan for the state violates the VRA. That's because the state of Texas chose to skip the cheaper pre-clearance process, which would have put the decision in the hands of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. A hearing is set for Wednesday.

And DOJ's position on the SBOE and state Senate redistricting plan still doesn't grant Texas preclearance because the state chose to go through the court; it merely lays out the Justice Department's position in the ongoing litigation. Regardless of DOJ's position, the court can still potentially find that the SBOE and state Senate maps aren't in compliance with the VRA.

DOJ veteran and redistricting expert J. Gerald Hebert saw the Justice Department's filing as a "good sign" for the Civil Rights Division, which had undergone politicization during the Bush administration.

"I think DOJ concluded like many of us have who looked at this that the congressional map and the house map don't meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act," Hebert told TPM.

"I mean in 2003 when Tom DeLay did the redistricting, the professional staff recommended that the plan be denied preclearance, but they were overruled," Hebert said. "This document reads like it's a professional staff answer, professional staff looked at this and made their determination."

"I think it's a good sign that voting rights is back in the hands of people who are going to make a judgement about the facts and the law," Hebert continued.

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"It's a critical step in figuring where we end up in redistricting, especially Congressional redistricting," Michael Li, a Democratic election attorney in Dallas, told Roll Call's Shira Toeplitz. "It's the first time Democrats have controlled the Justice Department [during this process] in 40 years, since the Voting Rights Act was enacted. Everyone has been wondering how aggressive the Justice Department is going to be."

About that politicization of the Civil Rights Section during the Bush administration. Joan McCarter posts at Daily Kos: The Republicans promise a heated-up 2012 war on voting:

Digby has a critical primer on the history of voter suppression in the U.S. and you should go read it now. It includes former Chief Justice William Rehnquist preparing for his role in deciding the 2000 presidential election by bullying African American voters at a polling place in Phoenix, Arizona in 1964.

The history of the GOP's efforts to keep as many as people out of the polls, digby reminds us, is long. But the remarkable efforts of the Bush administration gave the effort impetus that's going to be difficult to break.

The Bush Department of Justice more or less closed down the civil rights division, which had monitored compliance with the Voting Rights Act. It even concocted an illegal scheme to replace US Attorneys who refused to flout laws and Department of Justice rules against interfering in elections.

The federal courts, which had been packed with GOP judges for decades, began to rule in favor of "Voter ID" laws on the basis of claims of systemic voter fraud for which there was no documented evidence. More states found reasons to deny the vote to people convicted of breaking the law, even after they had paid their debt to society. "ACORN" became a euphemism for inner-city voter fraud.

Little by little, it became more and more difficult to exercise for people of color, immigrants, the elderly and the poor to exercise their franchise. The resultant red tape and bureaucratic delays have made it more difficult for working people to vote as well. It's hard to believe that it could get any worse than that, but it has.[…]

Hubert Humphrey famously said, "It is not enough to merely defend democracy. To defend it may be to lose it; to extend it is to strengthen it. Democracy is not property; it is an idea." If that is true, it's an idea that has become nothing but an inconvenient abstraction to the Republican side of the aisle. Extending democracy is beyond our wildest dreams at the moment, as conservatives work overtime to make it harder for average citizens to vote, instead of easier. Defending democracy is the only option we have.

This is the project that every Democratic (and democratic) organization in the country should be working on now. Republican legislators, governors and secretaries of state in a dozen states have passed legislation in just the last three years to make it much harder, if not impossible, for Americans to vote. Efforts to restrict voting have been introduced in 38 states. All of it designed to keep would-be Democratic voters from the polls, and, incidentally, to get the black president out of the White House. But that's just the immediate goal. The long-term one is to restrict voting as much as possible to the people who will vote for Republicans.

Campus Progress has been tracking voter suppression efforts in the states, as has the Brennan Center for Justice. You can use these resources as a starting point for finding the requirements for voting in your state.