US
Attorney General believes the new voting laws passed by states may jeopardize
the rights of the 1965 act.
Attorney
General Eric Holder told African-American clergy leaders Wednesday that a wave
of new state laws on voting and legal challenges to the Voting Rights Act of
1965 may jeopardize rights they helped fight for in the civil rights era.
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| US Attorney General Eric Holder |
"Despite
our nation's long tradition of extending voting rights ... a growing number of
our fellow citizens are worried about the same disparities, divisions and
problems that - nearly five decades ago - so many fought to address,"
Holder told a meeting of the Conference of National Black Churches convened by
the Congressional Black Caucus to discuss the laws.
Holder
spoke in response to an array of new voting measures enacted by several mostly Republican
state governments that proponents say are needed to protect against voter fraud
and to prevent illegal immigrants from voting. However, the mostly Democratic
black caucus - along with several civil rights, voting rights and civil
liberties groups - contends that the laws are really efforts to suppress the
votes of minorities and others.
Since
last year, at least 15 states have passed laws that include requiring people to
show government-approved photo identification or proof of citizenship before
they register or vote.
A
study last year by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University says
the changes could restrict voting access to 5 million people, most of them
minorities, elderly or poor. The NAACP estimates that about 25 percent of
African-Americans don't possess the proper documentation to meet ID
requirements in some states; the figure is 11 percent for the overall
population.
"There
is a right-wing conspiracy that is alive and well in this country that is
trying to take us back to 1900 and even before," Rep. G.K. Butterfield,
D-N.C., a black caucus member, told the clergy leaders. "What they want to
do is not take away the right to vote, but if black voter participation can be
diminished even by 10 percent it will make that critical difference all across
the country."
Black
caucus members argue that the photo ID law is a 21st-century poll tax that
forces voters to pay for driver's licenses or other government-sanctioned photo
identification to be able to exercise a guaranteed constitutional right.
"This
little thing in my hand is a driver's license," former Rep. Artur Davis,
D-Ala., said at a Houston summit earlier this month hosted by True the Vote, a
tea party group that's seeking to train thousands of volunteers nationwide to
be poll watchers this November. "This is not a billy club, this is not a
fire hose, and this is not Jim Crow, though some people say it is." Even
though Artur Davis is still upset with democrats and African Americans such as
himself, because of the fact that he didn’t win the nomination for Governor in
Alabama. He now insists he is a republican and believe in the republican principles.
Who would ever believe a windshield wiper blade that goes back and forth? He
just been against African Americans and the democratic party every since, his
words speak for itself.
Davis,
a former black caucus member who seconded President Barack Obama's nomination
at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and unsuccessfully ran for governor
of Alabama in 2010, announced that he's switching to the Republican Party and
is considering running for a U.S. House of Representatives seat in Virginia.
Holder
told the clergy leaders Wednesday that at least nine lawsuits have been filed
over the last two years challenging the constitutionality of Section 5 of the
act - which requires states with a history of racial discrimination to get
federal approval for changes in their voting procedures - and arguing that it's
no longer needed because the states under it have made great strides in
ensuring that voting access is fair and nondiscriminatory.
"I
wish this were the case," Holder said. "But the reality is that, in
jurisdictions across the country, both overt and subtle forms of discrimination
remain all too common - and have not yet been relegated to the pages of
history."
