Southern Republicans Attack Voting Rights Act

An intensifying conservative legal assault on the Voting Rights Act could precipitate what many civil rights advocates regard as the nuclear option: a court ruling striking down one of the core elements of the landmark 1965 law guaranteeing African Americans and other minorities access to the ballot box.

At the same time, the view that states should have free rein to change their election laws even in places with a history of Jim Crow seems to be gaining traction within the Republican Party. Just recently we have seen voter ID laws passed by GOP legislatures in South Carolina and Texas struck down by the Justice Department.

“There certainly has been a major change,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of election law at the University of California at Irvine. “Now, you have a whole bunch of state attorneys general and governors taking this view. … That would have been unheard of even five years ago. You would have been accused of being a racist.”

The issue has surfaced in the Republican presidential contest, including at one of the televised debates, and could move to the front burner within weeks as a federal appeals court in Washington prepares to rule on the leading lawsuit against the Voting Rights Act. That case, brought by Shelby County, Ala., is backed by the attorneys general of Alabama, Arizona and Georgia. At least three similar constitutional challenges are pending.

When the law last came up for renewal in 2006, the vote for the bill was a lopsided 390-33 in the House. And in the Senate, critics of the law couldn’t pick up a single vote. It passed, 98-0. President George W. Bush didn’t just support renewal of the law — he held a Rose Garden celebration for the bill signing that included the entire Congressional Black Caucus and bipartisan supporters from the Senate and House.

Those days of bi-partisan cooperation are long past.

Juan Williams, the Fox news analyst and author of books on the civil rights movement, said some Republicans seem almost eager to go after the Voting Rights Act. “When you have hard evidence of a past practice and you say you still don’t buy into it, then there does come a point where you say: ‘What is this really about? Repressing the minority vote?’” Williams said in an interview.

Williams said he thinks the current round of doubts about the law is also fueled by a perception that voter fraud is rampant, particularly in inner cities and areas with larger concentrations of minorities.

“There’s a racial element to this,” he said.