Reply #21: SC: Voting Rights Act Is Pillar for Fairness

[rumpel]

MyrtleBeachonline The Sun News

OTHER VOICES
Posted on Wed, Jul. 26, 2006

America has come a long way in race relations. Evidence for that was last week's unanimous Senate vote for renewing the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, a measure President Bush plans to sign.

In fact, the enthusiastic support for the act in both chambers of Congress and the White House could raise a question about the present need for a law that was narrowly passed during the death throes of Southern segregation. Yet, the participation of minorities is too important in America's politics today to accept any risk of erosion. Even if it serves primarily as a monument to what good law can do, the Voting Rights Act deserves to maintain a revered place in the statute books.

Jim Crow laws kept Southern black Americans from exercising their Constitutional right to vote for much of the 20th century. It took nonviolent civil disobedience by the victims of those laws to call the nation's attention to the injustice of poll taxes and literacy tests. The violent reaction of some Southern authorities produced a national revulsion that led to the Voting Rights Act and other reforms.

The act swept away the discriminatory obstacles by regulating states and local jurisdictions with a history of blocking votes. Nine states, mostly in the South, and local jurisdictions in five other states have been required to seek the federal Justice Department's approval before changing voting procedures.

One particularly insidious tactic for diluting minority vote strength - unfairly drawn congressional and legislative redistricting maps - has been countered by Justice Department reviews. Without that check, in tandem with federal court decisions, North Carolina would doubtless have fewer black representatives than it does today.

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