Texas among the States with the Most Egregious Voting Rights Violations, Says Report
Feature Story by Tyler Lewis - 6/28/2006
Significant discrimination against minority voters continues, sometimes in flagrant defiance of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), according to a new report by RenewtheVRA.org.Texas has only been subject to federal preclearance - the provision of the Act that requires certain jurisdictions to submit voting or election changes to the Justice Department before the changes can be enacted - since 1975. In that year, coverage was extended to the state because of its history of pervasive disenfranchisement of Mexican-American voters.
The Texas report was released in the wake of the derailment by a small group of House Republicans, led by Lynn Westmoreland, R.Ga., of an important vote to renew key protections in a law largely considered the most successful civil rights legislation ever enacted.
The Republicans took issue with the language assistance provision, which requires jurisdictions with a certain number of voters who do not speak English well to provide assistance in the voters' native language. Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, told the Houston Chronicle on June 26, "I don't think we have racial bias in Texas anymore,"
But the report found that Texas has the second highest number of Justice Department objections to discriminatory voting changes since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) was last renewed in 1982. It also found that the state has withdrawn more discriminatory changes than any other covered state after the Justice Department asked for clarification of the effects the changes would have, which the report cites as evidence of the VRA's deterrent effect.
The report found that many jurisdictions flouted the obligation to provide language assistance to voters, including recent examples in: Harris County in 2002 with respect to its Vietnamese voters; Hale County in 2005 with respect to its Spanish voters; and Ector County in 2006 with respect to its Spanish voters.
As recently as August 2003, weeks before a September election, Bexar County attempted to eliminate five early polling places that serve predominantly Latino neighborhoods. Because Bexar County adopted the changes without submitting them in a timely manner, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) brought suit and prevented the polling place closures.
With a growing Asian-American community, nearly two million African Americans and the second largest Latino population in the nation, Texas is among the nation's most diverse states. The report cited Census figures showing that 6.15 percent of all voting-age Texans do not speak English well.
Nina Perales, Southwest Regional Counsel for the MALDEF and one of the report's authors, said that the Republicans are conflating the language provision for citizens with the immigration debate. Perales said that the debate about language provisions is not about undocumented immigrants, but about American citizens who require assistance to understand often complicated English ballots and election rules.
"This is not just [about] Spanish," said Rep. Charles A. Gonzalez, D. Texas. "It is hard to believe that any Texas resident who has spent a significant amount of time in the state would not appreciate the need for language protections."
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.
