In response to a recent Supreme Court ruling in which the court found Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 unconstitutional, Attorney General
Eric Holder announced Thursday that the Justice Department is launching a new initiative
in the battle for voting rights. How does this affect Texas state and local
government? The Justice Department is recommending that a federal district
court in San Antonio require Texas (yes us, again) to get federal approval
before putting future redistricting changes in place.
In Holders view, this initiative (with Texas being
the first of many states) will strengthen modern voting protections by cutting down
on what many view as discriminatory practices, such as Texas’ incessant
redistricting and gerrymandering. Attorney General Greg Abbott called the move
"political theater" while Governor Rick Perry responded by calling this the Obama Administration’s attempt to work-around
the Supreme Court’s ruling, and challenged the constitutionality of Holder’s
request.
Now before you get all worked up about the feds pulling
your card (Perry), let’s take a closer look at the Act and the
Supreme Court’s ruling.
Section
4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 provides the “coverage formula,” defining
“covered jurisdictions” as states or political subdivisions of the states (nine
states including Texas and other counties) that maintained tests or
devices as prerequisites to voting, and had low voter registration or turnout. In such covered jurisdictions, Section 5 of
the Act provides that no change in voting procedures can take effect until
approved by specified federal authorities.
While The
Supreme Court struck down Section 4, Section 5 of the Act is still in effect,
thus the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal preclearance is still
constitutional. Simply put, Section 4 provides a definition of a state or local
jurisdictions with discriminatory voting practices and patterns.
The elimination of Section 4 renders even more state and local governments
susceptible to preclearance, as hardly any states utilize tests or devices as
prerequisites to voting; however, many have extremely low voter registration and turnout and perceptibly discriminatory practices.
It just so happens that Texas’ voter turnout currently ranks dead last in the nation. Texas’ voting practices have been heavily scrutinized for decades and many deem them as as discriminatory. It was only a matter of time that these
questionable practices would be further examined and possibly regulated. If it were
Atlanta or Alaska who ranked last out of the 51 contiguous states and districts I’m sure
the uproar in Texas would not be so extreme.
After reading Courtney Robertson’s post on her blog, Courtney Robertson / TX Justice, I definitely felt more informed about how Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department are working to preserve voting rights. In her post, Courtney provides quality background on several important elements and key stakeholders affected by the initiative. First, she briefly described how the Justice Department’s initiative will affect Texas by forcing the state to get federal approval before making redistricting changes. Then, she proceeded to describe Attorney General Holder’s goal for the plan to decrease discriminatory practices such as Texas’ frequent redistricting and gerrymandering. While this information was helpful, it would have provided better context to include the fact that the initiative hopes to prevent problems such as the 2003 redistricting crisis from occurring in the future.
ReplyDeleteOne key aspect in the beginning of the post that really stood out was the succinct, relevant quotes from both Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Governor Rick Perry. By including their critical views that the Obama Administration is trying to work around the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Act of 1965, it helped the reader quickly understand the point of contention between the federal government and the Texas government. Also, I thought that the sentence about the feds pulling Governor Perry’s calling card was a good insertion of humor into the post. It made the post seem more personal in style, and it provided an interesting way to set up the following analysis.
The analysis portion of the post examined the rationale underlying the federal government’s enforcement of federal preclearance is constitutional. While Section 4 of the Voting Rights act of 1965 was struck down, Section 5 is still in effect. Therefore, the federal government is not trying to work around the Supreme Court’s ruling; rather they are instead fulfilling their duty to protect the rights of Texas citizens. This information demonstrates that Greg Abbott’s “political theatre” comment about the Obama Administration was based on political allegiances rather than facts. Another excellent point Courtney made was that because Texas recently ranked last in voter turnout, it was only a matter of time before their voting practices were examined. While I believe this a great point, I felt that the statistic of Texas being ranked last in voter turnout may have provided more impact and served as a quality attention-getter if it was placed earlier in the post. Since Courtney’s conclusion is based around the idea that Texans should not be surprised that voting practices are being regulated, I think it would have provided better flow to introduce this rationale earlier in the post.
Overall, I thought that Courtney’s post was a quality piece of writing and was very informative. The succinct nature of her writing and factual background information provided excellent context for the topic and made a complicated set of government actions easy to understand.