Conference Highlights Continued Need to Move the "Unmovable Lines" Blocking Equal Access to Voting
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 8/15/2005
The voting rights gains of the last 40 years will be severely compromised if key provisions of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) are not renewed in 2007, voting rights experts and advocates warned at a national conference on the VRA's impact and viability held in Washington, DC.Signed into law on August 6, 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson after the brutal beatings of peaceful protest marchers in Selma on the day that came to be known as "bloody Sunday," the VRA bans racial discrimination in voting, and requires specific districts to provide bilingual assistance to language minority voters.
At the conference's opening reception, Rep. John Lewis, D. Ga., who was one of the marchers beaten at Selma, discussed the importance of continuing its legacy 40 years later, stating, "In 1965, I saw people standing in unmovable lines, trying day after day to pass the so-called literacy test...those tests are gone, but the unmovable lines reemerged in the elections of 2000 and 2004. Those challenges to equal access made it clear to the average American citizen that we have not fully escaped the chains of our dark past."
Numerous civil rights organizations were represented at the two-day conference, which was sponsored by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund, including the NAACP, NAACP LDF, ACLU and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF).New York City Council member John Lui, and legal scholar, Professor Jamin Raskin, were also part of the conference program.
The conference was designed to encourage activists and civil rights colleagues to re-educate themselves and their affiliates on the need for reauthorization of the VRA and to create compelling messages regarding the importance of the law.
On August 6, 2007, three special provisions will be up for renewal: Section 5, the federal pre-clearance provision; Section 203, which requires certain jurisdictions to provide bilingual materials; and Sections 6-9, which authorize the Department of Justice to send federal examiners and observers to monitor elections.
Citing how crucial these provisions are to the strength of the VRA, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund President Theodore M. Shaw stated, "While the VRA has transformed the face of America, its work will not be complete unless those effective provisions are reauthorized consistent with the original intent of the Act."
Permanent provisions of the VRA will not expire, but supporters of reauthorization believe they will lose their saliency without the temporary provisions.
The special provisions allow for significant federal oversight of state and local voting functions for jurisdictions deemed to have the worst and most persistent histories of voting discrimination against their minority populations. This heightened oversight is intended to identify and prevent proposed voting changes that worsen the position of minority voters or, just as significantly, to deter covered jurisdictions from seeking to propose such voting changes from the outset.
Since the VRA was enacted, minority representation in all spheres of government has increased dramatically. In his opening remarks, Arturo Vargos, executive director of NALEO said, "The Voting Rights Act has helped Latino voters strengthen their voice at the polls and choose the public servants who will represent them...As a result, an increasing number of Latinos are serving at all levels of public office."
