Voting Rights Act

House members who spent all day Thursday trying to hollow out the Voting Rights Act ably demonstrated why what were once temporary provisions of the three-decade-old civil rights legislation are still so vital. The solid bipartisan majorities by which those attempts were rebuffed, and the overwhelming tally by which the House voted to extend law's protections for another 25 years, failed to obscure the ugly sentiments still lurking in some quarters. Take the delegation from Georgia, for example.

The Justice Department is authorized under the Voting Rights Act to "pre-clear" changes in election-related laws in certain states with a history of racial discrimination. It seldom does, because the mere fact that the power exists keeps states and localities honest. But now the Supreme Court's six Reagan-Bush appointees have given the green right to certain kinds of changes that no Supreme Court nor any attorney general -- including the present one -- has ever approved.In a 6-3 decision, the court said two Alabama counties could take power away from individual county commissioners and give it to appointed officials controlled by the majorities of the commissions or to the commission majorities directly.

FOR 40 YEARS, the Voting Rights Act has prohibited certain racially discriminatory election practices and given the federal government supervisory powers over states that used such practices. Before its enactment Aug. 6, 1965, few blacks could vote, making the promise of democracy as hollow as was the promise of liberty to slaves in the Declaration of Independence. The 15th Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1870 specifically to address this issue, did very little. The right to vote, therefore, must be considered the Super Bowl of the civil rights struggle.

The Supreme Court has just demonstrated starkly how far to the right it has been tugged by the Reagan-Bush appointees of the past decade. By a 6-3 vote it turned its back on a long, unbroken line of precedents regarding the Voting Rights Act -- and rebuffed the Bush Justice Department's own interpretation of the law in the process.Section 5 of the act requires subdivisions in states with a history of racial discrimination in voting to "pre-clear" changes in elections laws and procedures that could have a discriminatory effect.

PEOPLE ATTEMPTING to register to vote should not be beaten with billy clubs by police because of their skin color.Yet this is just what the nation saw happening in Selma, Ala., as they watched their TVs on Sunday, March 7, 1965.The resulting national outrage over the now-infamous "Bloody Sunday" prompted Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson to enact the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed many barriers aimed at preventing blacks in the South from registering to vote and exercising their full political rights.

THE Lani Guinier affair gave those who know her a sense of Kafkaesque unreality.Her experience, character, respect for the law and balanced approach to the issues would have made her one of the finest assistant attorneys general ever to serve our country. She is superbly qualified, mainstream and pro-integrationist in the tradition of Thurgood Marshall.President Clinton's withdrawal of her name last Thursday not only was unfair; it was an example of political cowardice.Those intimately familiar with the history of racial discrimination in this country and with recent cases under the Voting Rights Act understand all too well the problems that Ms. Guinier addresses in her scholarly writings, which explore possible court remedies for the worst instances of racial discrimination in the political process.

MILWAUKEE - Civil rights activist the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson capped off a day of grass-roots political strategizing yesterday by imploring NAACP members to urge their congressional representatives to extend soon-to-expire provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. "The Voting Rights Act as we know it is on the chopping block," Jackson told an audience of about 300 at Milwaukee's Midwest Airlines Center, where the National Association for the Advancement of...

ATLANTA -- In the four decades since Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, this nation has undergone a dramatic political and social transformation. From California to New York, from Virginia to Florida, black men and women have won election to political offices, including prestigious statewide posts. Given that progress, some politicians and social observers say, the Voting Rights Act has outlived its usefulness. It's time to let it die, they say. Many of their arguments are rational and persuasive.

Editor: The U.S. has made great strides in the area of civil rights. Over the past 100 years, numerous laws have been passed to protect citizens from discrimination based on religion, sex, race, age, disability and veteran status. These laws include the 19th amendment to the Constitution, the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, the American with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994.

SIX MONTHS have passed since the flawed 2000 election threw democracy into chaos. Americans demand that President Bush and Congress act promptly to guarantee that our voting rights will be protected in future elections. The president -- and Republican House and Senate leaders -- must respond for themselves. I am convinced, however, that the actions needed to restore confidence in the democratic process are straight-forward and achievable. The first step toward comprehensive election reform must be a bipartisan commitment to enforcing the voting rights laws already on the books.