Reply #14: The Brennan Center brought up "preclearence" in their complaint to the DOJ.

[Bill Bored]

They claimed:

"After extensive research, we have concluded that these (overvote notification) policies violate New York State law and should have been precleared with the Department of Justice, pursuant to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This apparently was not done. We have alerted the Department of Justice, and the New York State and City Boards to our findings."

http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/archives/brennan_center_notifies_doj_that_new_york_voting_changes_were_not_precleare/

Here's their notice of "Unprecleared Voting Change"
http://brennan.3cdn.net/2458e481184c5d02ee_ukm6i93ft.pdf

That wasn't my idea. However, the SBOE claims they're voting system was precleared, which is not my idea either. In seeking preclearance, the SBOE misrepresented the operation of the voting system.

You are correct that the actual lawsuit is about Section 2, which is not preclearance, but the defendants are going to say the system was precleared by the DOJ.