This bill reauthorizing the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which expires next year, has strong bipartisan support. Hastert and Frist are even co-sponsors, along with all members of the Congressional Black Caucus. But Hastert and Boehner today caved in to Westmorland and Norwood, two backward thinking Georgia congressmen who have been trying their damndest to stop this bill. If this is not passed before the Congress goes out on recess next month, we are in danger of the Voting Rights Act expiring and leaving black voters with no protection!
Call Hastert and Boehner to tell them to stand up to the bigots in their caucus who want nothing more than to turn back the clock on civil rights back to the time when states were free to deny blacks the ability to vote!!!
House Delays Renewal of Voting Rights ActBy LAURIE KELLMAN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
WASHINGTON -- House Republican leaders on Wednesday postponed a vote on renewing the 1965 Voting Rights Act after GOP lawmakers complained it unfairly singles out nine Southern states for federal oversight.
. . .
It was unclear whether the legislation would come up this year. The temporary provisions don't expire until 2007, but leaders of both parties had hoped to pass the act and use it to further their prospects in the fall's midterm elections.
The four-decade-old law enfranchised millions of black voters by ending poll taxes and literacy tests during the height of the civil rights struggle. A vote on renewing it for another 25 years had been scheduled for Wednesday, with both Republican and Democratic leaders behind it.
. . .
The legislation was approved by the Judiciary Committee on a 33-1 vote. But despite leadership support, controversy has shadowed the legislation 40 years after it first prohibited policies that blocked blacks from voting. Several Republicans, led by Westmoreland, had worked to allow an amendment that would ease a requirement that nine states win permission from the Justice Department or a federal judge to change their voting rules.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/21/AR2006062100287.html?nav=rss_email/components
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