Reply #9: NYT: House Delays Renewal of Voting Rights Act

[pnwmom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/21/washington/21cnd-votes.html?hp&ex=1150948800&en=e4a29f4284cbf696&ei=5094&partner=homepage

House Republican leaders today abruptly canceled a planned vote to renew the Voting Rights Act after a rank-and-file rebellion by lawmakers who say the civil rights measure unfairly singles out Southern states and promotes multi-lingual ballots.

The reversal represented a significant embarrassment for the party leadership, which has promised a vote on the landmark anti-discrimination law and hailed its imminent approval in a rare bipartisan press event on the steps of the Capitol last month.

But lawmakers critical of the bill mutinied in a closed meeting of House Republicans this morning just hours before the vote was expected to occur and several said it was uncertain whether a majority of Republicans would back the legislation at this point.

"A lot of it looks as if these are some old boys from the South who are trying to do away with it," said Representative Lynn A. Westmoreland of Georgia, who said it would be unfair to keep Georgia under the confines of the law when his state has cleaned up its voting rights record. "But these old boys are trying to make it Constitutional enough that it will withstand the scrutiny of the Supreme Court."

SNIP