Voting Rights Act Section 5 "not the only tool" to protect voting rights, Obama says
President Obama said he thinks the Supreme Court should uphold Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, but if it doesn't, there are other ways Washington can protect citizens' right to vote, he said.
"It's not the only tool that we have -- it's a critical tool, but it's not the only tool," Mr. Obama said of Section 5 in an interview with Joe Madison, host of The Black Eagle on Sirius XM Satellite Radio, which was taped Thursday and aired this morning. "I know in the past, some folks have worried that somehow, if the Supreme Court strikes down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, people are going to lose their right to vote - that's not the case. People will still have the same rights not to be discriminated against when it comes to voting, you just won't have this mechanism, this tool, that allows you to kind of stay ahead of certain practices that may discourage people from voting."
The court is slated to hear arguments next Wednesday in a case challenging Section 5. That provision of the Voting Rights Act requires states with a history of segregation to have their redistricting plans approved by the Justice Department's civil rights division or the D.C. federal court.
Voting Rights Act challengers take aim at "Section 5"
Mr. Obama called that pre-clearance process a "lynchpin of restoring our democracy." Without it, he noted, "people could keep coming up with new schemes each election, even if ultimately they were ruled to violate the Voting Rights Act, [and] it'd be hard for us to catch those things up front."
The president noted that in his State of the Union address earlier this month, he called for a commission to fix the nation's voting laws.
"If we have some national guidelines to make sure people aren't waiting in line... that there aren't new tricks that discourage people from voting," he said in the interview, "if we've got those in place, then obviously, it's not as good as keeping Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in place, which I think we should...but it's still possible for us to make sure that everyone is exercising their rights."
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What's especially ironic is that the principal use to which Section 5 is put today is forcing jurisdictions to create and maintain racially segregated and gerrymandered voting districts - which is completely at odds with the original ideals of the Civil Rights Movement.
The president is right that there are other federal laws available to protect the rights of voters, and he might have added that they don't raise the problems that Section 5 does.
Weird, Bush v. Vera in 1996, was a US Supreme Court case that shot that concept down. That said, where gerrymandering is a problem is in states where section 5 does not apply. Take Ohio. Its the swing state of all swing states. Every election is nearly 50/50. With 16 Congressmen from Ohio, you would think it would be split close to 8 GOP and 8 Dems. NOPE. Due to gerrymandering, GOP has 12 and Dems have 4.
Tip your hat to the GOP. If you can't play by the rules because a majority of America does not agree with you then change the rules. I wish the Dems would show the veracity that the GOP plays with.