Voting Rights Act, 1965

          Two weeks ago the Supreme Court ruled Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, 1965 as unconstitutional. This elimination also affected Section 5. On Saturday I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by professor, David Serena who teaches at Monterey Peninsula Community College, on what that means to Monterey County which was identified by Section 4 and had to follow the Section 5 process. There are three institutions in Santa Cruz County whose boundaries go into Monterey County and had to follow the Section 5 process of obtaining pre-clearance from the Justice Department. These are the Pajaro Valley Unified School District, Cabrillo College, and the Santa Cruz County Office of Education. They all took Section 5 into consideration when they completed their Redistricting maps based on the 2010 census. What I learned is that the Supreme Court decision will probably not have any negative impact on the voting rights of these jurisdictions because we are still protected by the 10th and 15th Amendment of the Constitution, by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and by the California Voting Rights Act, 2002. I write to attempt to clarify and educate us on the Supreme Court decision and encourage all of us to exercise our right to vote.  

            The 10th Amendment states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. The 15th Amendment states: Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Both these amendments support Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and support the California Voting Rights Act, 2002. Basically voting cannot be prohibited based on race, color, or membership in a language minority groups. I was reminded that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was the basis for changing the “at-large” elections in Watsonville to single-member district elections in 1989.

            When the lawsuit of Gomez vs the City of Watsonville was filed in 1986 to change the at-large elections, the records showed the following:

-The Latino population was 48.9%, White population, 42.5%, Asian population, 5.9%, other, 2.7%,

-From 1971-1985 eight Latinos had run unsuccessfully for city council and mayor,

-The majority of the Latino population was from the lower social-economic level, and

-33% of the Latino population was monolingual Spanish

To demonstrate that Section 2 of the VRA was being violated the data showed:

-There was racially polarized voting which diluted the voting strength of Latinos,

-There was racially block voting by Whites that led to the defeat of Latino candidates, and

-There was single-shot voting where Whites would only vote for White candidates

Because Latinos were geographically compact and there was political cohesiveness they met the definition of Section 2 to illustrate that single-member elections would provide a fairer avenue to have electoral representation.  The city of Watsonville spent $1 million dollars to fight the lawsuit and they lost. The Latino voice would finally be heard on city council. However, since the lawsuit it seems that the majority Latino city council is doing to the Whites what they had done to us. My advocacy during the lawsuit was to provide equality on the city council and not divisiveness between Latinos and Whites.  Over the years I personally have had conversations with several Latino city council members to share my concern.

            There will be arguments pro and con on the Supreme Court’s decision on Section 4. I remain confident that Section 2 and the California Voting Rights Act, 2002 that expanded the VRA will assure that every citizen will not be discriminated from voting. Recently three petitions have been submitted to begin gathering signatures to be placed on the ballot in 2014.  The intent is to obtain more citizen participation. You may agree or disagree with the measures, but nevertheless you need to get out to vote. At our last election in June out of 14,198 registered voters only 4,409 voted; that is approximately only 10%. Whether Latino, White, Asian or other you need to vote not because of the Voting Rights Act, but because the 15th Amendment and 19th Amendment guarantees every citizen of the United States the right to vote.