New Report: Voting Rights Act Protections Still Needed in Florida
Feature Story by Tyler Lewis - 4/7/2006
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) continues to remove barriers to voting for many Floridians, according to a new report on the state of voting rights in Florida by RenewtheVRA.org, a collaboration of national organizations that is examining the Voting Rights Act in the 24 years since its last full reauthorization.The VRA, considered the most successful civil rights legislation ever enacted, prohibits discrimination based on race.
Three key provisions of the VRA will expire in August 2007 if Congress does not act now to renew them: Section 5, which requires preclearance of voting changes in states and localities with a history of voting discrimination, Section 203, which require counties where more than 5 percent of citizens are not native English speakers to provide language assistance, and Sections 6-9, which authorize the Department of Justice to send federal examiners and observers to monitor elections.
According to the report, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), as recently as 2002, has prevented counties in Florida from making changes in voting rules that would have discriminated against the state's minority citizens.
Five counties - Collier, Hardee, Hendy, Hillsborough, and Monroe - are currently covered by Section 5, the federal preclearance provision.
Two occasions of preclearance violations were cited in the report: first in the Tampa Bay/Hillsborough area in 1992 and then again in Collier County in 2002.
Eight Florida counties are covered under Section 203: Broward, Hardee, Hendy, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Orange, Osceola, and Palm Beach.
The DOJ stepped in again in 2002 to prevent a Section 203 violation in Orange County, an area that had failed to provide adequate language assistance to voters. The action led to the creation of a Spanish Language Coordinator position, hiring of bilingual poll workers, and the production of Spanish-language election materials and ballots.
The report found that the VRA has been, and continues to be, critically important in guaranteeing Florida's minority voters' ability to register and vote, and in empowering minority communities to elect candidates of their choice.
"As the 2000 Presidential election made clear, Florida voters still need voting rights protections," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "Maintaining federal oversight of Florida's voting changes is important in regaining and retaining public confidence in the system - particularly among minority voters."
The RenewtheVRA.org collaborative includes such groups as the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, ACLU, and Asian American Justice Center. A full listing of collaborative members can be found at www.renewthevra.org.
