Editorials: A ruling on racial progress | Jonah Golberg/Los Angeles Times

I can only hope that the scourge of racism is finally purged from Stewartstown and Pinkham’s Grant. These are two of 10 New Hampshire towns covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which requires local officials to get permission, or “preclearance,” on any changes to their election laws. Stewartstown has just over a thousand souls in it and is 99% white. In 1970, when it was put under the authority of Section 5, the census listed two blacks out of its 1,008 residents. Pinkham’s Grant boasts nine residents, and it must also beg Washington for permission to make any changes to how it votes. In 1970, New Hampshire required all of its citizens to pass a literacy test to register to vote. But Pinkham’s Grant, Stewartstown and the other eight towns also had low voter participation rates. These two factors — a test of any kind for voting and participation rates under 50% — met the criteria for oversight under Section 5. But after years of onerous preparation, the state filed for a “bailout” from the oversight provisions of Section 5 in November. And although the Justice Department hasn’t taken a whole state off its watch list since the early 1980s, New Hampshire will probably be let off the hook.

National: High court to hear plea to gut Voting Rights Act | The Leaf Chronicle

Iron-fisted enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act transformed American politics, especially in the South, by making sure minorities had a clear path to the ballot box and an equal shot at public service. Forty-eight years later, after the re-election of an African-American president, the heart of that law is on trial. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday in a case that is sure to ignite a debate over how far the country has progressed on racial issues and whether minority voters still need extra protection. Shelby County, Ala., opposed by the Justice Department and civil rights groups, wants two key sections of the Voting Rights Act declared unconstitutional. Section 5 bars election officials in jurisdictions with a history of discrimination from changing their voting procedures unless they first prove the changes won’t hurt minorities. Section 4b uses a formula to determine which states, counties and municipalities are subject to Section 5. Shelby County says the provisions are outmoded and unfair to parts of the country that have transcended their discriminatory pasts.

National: Voting Rights Act: A political twist for the South | USAToday

The Voting Rights Act that goes on trial at the Supreme Court on Wednesday has helped boost African Americans’ presence in Southern legislatures. But in a twist of irony, it also has contributed to their loss of political clout. Since its passage in 1965, the law’s Section 5 has forced states with a history of racial discrimination to clear changes in voting procedures with the federal government. The Justice Department, in turn, has insisted that drawing district lines is one of those procedures – one that should give blacks and other minorities ample opportunity to elect their preferred candidates. That has led to the creation of so-called majority-minority election districts dominated by blacks or Hispanics, nearly all of them Democrats. Achieving that goal, however, has required the simultaneous creation of more heavily white, Republican districts in surrounding areas.

National: Are some civil rights era protections still relevant? Supreme Court will decide | McClatchy

The Justice Department stayed silent when Indiana and Washington state strengthened their voter identification rules. But when Georgia and Texas lawmakers wanted to do the same, they needed federal approval. Now, this different treatment for different states will face a make-or-break test at the Supreme Court. In a potentially landmark case, justices on Wednesday will consider whether it’s time to dismantle a key plank of the historic 1965 Voting Rights Act. “This case presents questions that cut to the very core of our democracy,” said Caroline Frederickson, president of the liberal-leaning American Constitution Society. Passed when state-sanctioned racism was at its most insidious, the Voting Rights Act contains multiple elements designed to root out discriminatory practices. The entire law, originally spanning 19 sections, is not at risk of repeal in the case being heard Wednesday. Instead, the case arising out of Shelby County, Ala., centers primarily on two muscular sections that happen to have the biggest reach, and that the county is challenging.

Virginia: Legislators Approve Voter ID Law, May Kill Chances for Federal Bailout | The Nation

Earlier this week, the Virginia House of Delegates passed a photo voter ID law that narrows the list of identification voters are required to show on Election Day to vote. The bill, which now sits before Gov. Bob McDonnell to sign or veto, would allow only a driver’s license or U.S. passport to vote. Without either of those, a voter would have to file a provisional ballot, and then bring the required photo ID to the election board by the Friday after Election Day. If McDonnell signs it, it wouldn’t go into effect until 2014 — when the mid-term congressional elections are held — but it would have to be approved by the federal government first. Since Virginia is a covered jurisdiction under the Voting Rights Act’s Section 5, any election law they make has to be pre-cleared by the U.S. Justice Department or the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

National: Advocates Warn Of Dire Consequences If Voting Rights Act Loses In Supreme Court | TPM

Supporters of the Voting Rights Act are painting a bleak picture of what it would mean for the rights of minority voters if the Supreme Court were to strike down the landmark 1965 law’s Section 5, which requires state and local governments with a history of disenfranchising minority voters (i.e. mostly in the south) to receive preclearance from the Justice Department or federal court before changing laws that affect voting. “Broadly speaking, if we didn’t have Section 5 we would find that minority voters are in many places around the covered jurisdictions will have their ability to equally participate in the political process severely compromised,” Julie Fernandes, a civil rights activist and former deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said this week. “We’ll see a lot more of the diluting tactics that we used to have.” The Supreme Court hears oral arguments Wednesday in Shelby County v. Holder, the most serious challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Right Acts in the nearly 50 years since its enactment. The liberal-leaning Center For America Progress held a briefing with reporters in advance of the Supreme Court hearing where experts, including Fernandes, made the case for the validity and necessity of Section 5. Nervous that their side will face five very skeptical justices at oral arguments, they described the part of the law as critical to protecting minority voters’ rights.

Virginia: Photo ID voting mandate passes in Virginia, heads to governor | WJLA.com

General Assembly Republicans muscled the most far-reaching of their polling place identification and voter vetting bills to final passage Wednesday with almost party-line House votes on Wednesday over the outcries of Democrats who likened the measures to Jim Crow-era poll taxes. On a 65-34 vote, the House completed legislative action on a strict photo identification bill that would require all voters to present identification such as a drivers license or passport bearing a photo of the holder to cast a regular ballot. Those without it would have to vote a provisional ballot that would count only if the voter could provide local election officials with the required identification by noon on the Friday after the election. Only one Democrat supported the measure. If Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell signs it into law, it would take effect in 2014 unless the U.S. Justice Department determines it violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Florida: Supreme Court to weigh constitutionality of voting rights protection | Tallahassee Democrat

Iron-fisted enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act transformed American politics, especially in the South, by making sure minorities had a clear path to the ballot box and an equal shot at public service. Forty-eight years later, after the re-election of an African-American president, the heart of that law is on trial. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Feb. 27 in a case that is sure to ignite a national debate over how far the country has progressed on racial issues and whether minority voters still need extra protection. Shelby County, Ala., opposed by the Justice Department and civil rights groups, wants two key sections of the Voting Rights Act declared unconstitutional. Section 5 bars election officials in jurisdictions with a history of discrimination from changing their voting procedures unless they first prove the changes won’t hurt minorities. Section 4b uses a formula to determine which states, counties and municipalities are subject to Section 5. Though they are not challenging the law, five Florida counties — Collier, Hardee, Hendry, Hillsborough and Monroe — are covered by the Voting Rights Act.

Texas: Redistricting appeal likely on hold at Supreme Court | San Antonio Express-News

A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on whether to hear Texas’ appeal in a redistricting case is likely to be delayed until the justices rule on a different voting rights case, lawyers involved in the Texas battle said Friday. Supreme Court justices have held a series of screening conferences to select the cases to be argued during the spring term. So far, justices haven’t selected the Texas appeal of a federal court ruling that the state discriminated against minorities with new redistricting maps for Congress and the Legislature. Texas, in its appeal, also has challenged the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that requires prior approval by the Justice Department of any changes to voting laws and procedures for jurisdictions with a history of discrimination.

National: Obama’s proposed voting commission under partisan fire from both sides | The Washington Post

President Obama’s proposed commission on electoral reform, which seeks to improve voting efficiency and reduce long wait times for voters, is producing heated criticism from advocates on both the right and the left. Some conservatives view the initiative as federal overreaching on an issue that is rightly the province of states, while some voting rights advocates say that the president’s proposed commission is a too-timid response to what they see as a huge problem. “Setting up a commission is not a bold step; it is business as usual,” said Elisabeth Mac­Namara, president of the League of Women Voters. Critics of the commission say it doesn’t match the severity of the problem. “The president could have done much better by pointing to real solutions, like that in legislation already introduced on Capitol Hill to require early voting, set limits on waiting times, provide for portable voter registration and set up secure online voter registration.” Conservatives said the commission infringes on local control of the voting process. “I do not support the president’s proposal to appoint yet another national commission to study solutions to the problem of long lines at polling places that seems to be confined to very few states,” Rep. Candice S. Miller (R-Mich.) said in a statement, adding that she is opposed to national mandates.

Editorials: If the Supreme Court strikes down Section 5 – Watch out in the covered jurisdictions | Michael J. Pitts/The Great Debate (Reuters)

If the Supreme Court strikes down Section 5, Congress is unlikely to pass any sort of “New Voting Rights Act.” So when thinking about what happens next, we need to focus on what voting changes the jurisdictions now subject to oversight might enact that would violate Section 5’s principal aim of preserving minority voting strength. In doing so, there are two dichotomies to consider: one between state legislatures and local governments, the other between voting changes related to ballot access, such as voter registration, and those related to vote dilution, such as redistricting. When it comes to state governments and vote dilution, states seem unlikely to dismantle districts that give minority voters clout — the “safe” districts that often have a majority of minority population. One reason it’s unlikely is that most of the states under Section 5 oversight are controlled by Republicans, and Republicans often perceive safe minority districts as politically favorable because they pack reliable Democratic voters together. That’s not to say all states will preserve all such districts—there will undoubtedly be outliers. But massive retrogression of minority voting strength on the statewide level seems unlikely.

Editorials: Delegate the Voting Rights Act oversight formula | Christopher S. Elmendorf/The Great Debate (Reuters)

If the Supreme Court strikes the pre-clearance provisions (Section 5) of the Voting Rights Act, it will most likely do so because the statute’s “coverage formula” is untethered from evidence of current discrimination against racial minorities. The oversight formula determines which states must receive the federal government’s blessing before making any changes to their election laws. It is based on decades-old evidence of discrimination. When Congress in 2006 extended the pre-clearance provisions for another 25 years, legal scholars warned that the extension would be constitutionally vulnerable ‑ unless Congress updated the formula. But politically this was too hot to handle.

National: Obama Inauguration Speech Gives Voting Rights A Shout-Out | Huffington Post

President Barack Obama said during his inauguration speech on Monday that it was up to this generation to carry on the work of previous civil rights icons in ensuring everyone had access to the polling place. “Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote,” Obama said in his speech. Obama had said on election night that the country had to “fix” the problem of long voting lines and the Justice Department is currently looking for ways to make voting easier. Voting rights advocates saw the shout-out as an good sign.

South Carolina: Voter ID Legal Fees Must Be Paid Partly By Feds, Court Rules | Huffington Post

Federal taxpayers will have to foot the bill for some legal fees incurred by the state of South Carolina when it successfully fought to implement its voter ID law over the Justice Department’s objections, a panel of federal judges ruled Friday. The same three D.C.-based federal judges who ruled in October that South Carolina could not implement the law in 2012 said in a court order that because the state successfully argued it could begin implementing the law in 2013, it “is the prevailing party” in the case. Justice Department lawyers had previously argued that “neither party fully ‘prevailed’ in this complex case” and said each party should bear its own costs and expenses.

New Hampshire: Conservative Group Attempts To Block New Hampshire’s Bailout From Voting Rights Act | Huffington Post

The state of New Hampshire and the Justice Department agree that the state shouldn’t have to seek permission from the federal government before making changes to its voting laws. But a conservative group that doesn’t think any state should be subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires certain jurisdictions to pre-clear any such changes, is trying to block New Hampshire’s so-called bailout, alleging it’s all part of a scheme to trick the Supreme Court. The Center for Individual Rights filed a motion to intervene in a federal lawsuit last month to attempt to block New Hampshire from getting out of Section 5, alleging the 10 New Hampshire towns or townships covered by the provision aren’t entitled to a bailout under the law.

Florida: Dems to Justice Department: probe Florida election law | Palm Beach Post

A divided U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will not convene hearings on Florida’s new election law, despite a request from the state’s six Democratic members of Congress, who charged that the measure intentionally limited access to the polls by blacks and many other Florida voters. But four members of the deadlocked commission – all Democrats – are independently requesting a U.S. Justice Department probe into the origins of the law, HB 1355, passed last year by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and signed by GOP Gov. Rick Scott. And U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, said Thursday that after four newly-elected Democratic congressmen are sworn in next month, bringing the state’s Democratic delegation to 10, he also hopes to take the issue directly to the Justice Department with their backing. “I’m going to try to get all 10 to sign on and we’ll see what the Justice Department does,” Hastings said. “After all, we have a smoking gun here.”

Texas: Voter ID Suit May Await Related High Court Ruling | Businessweek

The U.S. Justice Department agreed to defer further proceedings in a lawsuit filed by Texas over the state’s voter identification law until the Supreme Court rules whether part of the Voting Rights Act is constitutional. Attorney General Eric Holder, in a filing today in federal court in Washington, said the department could wait for the Supreme Court to review a provision of the 1965 law that requires all or part of 16 mostly Southern states to get federal approval before changing their voting rules.

Editorials: Do We Still Need the Voting Rights Act? | The Daily Beast

Sometime early next year, the Supreme Court is expected to invalidate Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the most powerful and effective tool that the United States government has to combat discriminatory election practices. The expected decision, in a case called Shelby County v. Holder is not being met with shock or outrage by legal academics, but rather a dismayed shrug. Section 5 is one of the most unique civil-rights laws because it does not apply to most of the country. Instead, with a handful of exceptions like Alaska, Arizona and part of New York City, it applies only to states in the South—to be specific: all of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, most of Virginia, part of North Carolina and a handful of counties of Florida. In these covered areas, every decision relating to elections is subject to approval, or preclearance, by the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. And every decision means every single decision.

Editorials: Voting Rights Act and the South on trial | CNN.com

How much has the South changed? That’s the question at the heart of one of the most important cases the Supreme Court will take up this year. The case weighs the fate of one of the most important laws in American history: the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A century after the Civil War, Congress created that law to give African Americans the right to vote, not just on paper, but in fact. The key provision was Section 5, which decreed that jurisdictions with histories of discrimination, mostly in the South, had to get Justice Department approval before they changed any aspect of their voting rules, right down to the location of polling places. There is little doubt that, in the years immediately after 1965, the Voting Rights Act achieved a revolution in voting rights for African-Americans in the South. In subsequent years, Congress has reauthorized the law several times, most recently in 2006.

National: Justice Department official: Register voters automatically | Huffington Post

One of the top enforcers of the nation’s civil rights laws said Friday government should be responsible for automatically registering citizens to vote by using existing databases to compile lists of all eligible residents in each jurisdiction. The proposal by Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, chief of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, follows an election with breakdowns that forced voters in many states to wait in line for hours. In remarks at George Washington University law school, Perez said census data shows that of 75 million adult citizens who failed to vote in the 2008 presidential election, 60 million were not registered and therefore ineligible to cast a ballot. Perez says one of the biggest barriers to voting in this country is an antiquated registration system.

US Virgin Islands: Attorney General orders probe of elections | Virgin Islands Daily News

V.I. Attorney General Vincent Frazer said Friday that he has set up a panel of his senior staff to look into a multitude of complaints residents have made to the V.I. Justice Department about the territory’s 2012 elections. “The complaints have been many,” he said. “We’ve gotten complaints about the conduct of the primary, about the certification of machines, about the use of ballots.” Those are just some of the complaints and allegations he is aware of, he said. “So we’ve established a panel of my senior staff to go in and investigate those things,” he said.

National: Voting Limits Caused Less Chaos This Year Than Epic Lines | TPM

There was confusion about a voter ID law in Pennsylvania, widespread use of provisional ballots in Ohio and problems for college students voting in Florida on Election Day. But the systematic, widespread voter disenfranchisement that some voting rights advocates had feared didn’t come to fruition in 2012. Instead, advocates said the largest issue for voters on Election Day was the problem of long lines at overwhelmed polling places, including locations in several key swing states like Virginia, Ohio, Nevada and Florida. President Barack Obama even raised the issue in his acceptance speech early Wednesday morning, thanking voters who “waited in line for a very long time” and adding “we have to fix that.”

National: Supreme Court to Revisit Voting Rights Act | NYTimes.com

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would take a fresh look at the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the signature legacies of the civil rights movement. Three years ago, the court signaled that part of the law may no longer be needed, and the law’s challengers said the re-election of the nation’s first black president is proof that the nation has moved beyond the racial divisions that gave rise to efforts to protect the integrity of elections in the South. The law “is stuck in a Jim Crow-era time warp,” said Edward P. Blum, director of the Project on Fair Representation, a small legal foundation that helped organize the suit. Civil rights leaders, on the other hand, pointed to the role the law played in the recent election, with courts relying on it to block voter identification requirements and cutbacks on early voting.

Editorials: Alabama, Texas voting rights cases keep political storms churning | Fort Worth Star Telegram

It might seem a stretch for Texas’ top elected officials to be intensely interested in such minutiae as the planning commission’s jurisdiction and voting boundaries in Shelby County, population almost 200,000, in the middle of Alabama. But a lawsuit that Shelby County has taken to the U.S. Supreme Court could determine Texas’ flexibility under the federal Voting Rights Act. And Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is aggressively cheering on Shelby County’s claim that a key part of the 1965 law is an unconstitutional imposition on states’ sovereignty.

Editorials: A New Right to Vote? Voter Suppression and the Judicial Backlash | The New Yorker

Is there a clear constitutional right to vote in the United States? The answer, traditionally, has been no. That’s what Republican-dominated states were banking on when they moved, after the 2010 elections, to restrict the franchise. But their campaign has seen a legal backlash against those efforts—one that may end up establishing that there is a right to vote in the U.S. after all. Many people are surprised that the Constitution contains no affirmative statement of a right to vote. Several amendments phrase the right in a negative way: the right to vote shall not be denied “on account of race” (fifteenth amendment), “on account of sex” (nineteenth), or, as long as you’re eighteen, “on account of age” (twenty-sixth, which lowered the voting age from twenty-one). But within those broad strictures, the Constitution has long been read as leaving up to the states how to register voters, conduct elections, and count the votes.

South Carolina: Court Blocks South Carolina Voter ID Law, for Now | NYTimes

A federal court on Wednesday blocked South Carolina from enforcing its new voter photo ID law in next month’s election, saying that there was not enough time to educate voters and officials about it. The ruling was the latest in a string of judicial interventions blunting a wave of Republican-led efforts to impose new restrictions on voting for the Nov. 6 election. But the court also ruled that South Carolina might put the law into effect in 2013. That permission, however, was contingent on a promise by state election officials to use an “extremely broad interpretation” of a provision that will make exceptions for voters who lack photo ID cards, allowing them to cast ballots as long as they give a reason for not having obtained one.

South Carolina: South Carolina Voter ID Blocked In 2012, Cleared For 2013 | TPM

A panel of federal judges ruled on Wednesday that South Carolina’s new voter ID does not have a discriminatory effect, but they also blocked it from going into effect in November. A Justice Department spokeswoman said DOJ was pleased that the court blocked the law from going into effect next month and noted that the law underwent “broad modifications” during the course of the trial to allow it to comply with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson called the ruling “a major victory for South Carolina and its elections process. It affirms our voter ID law is valid and constitutional under the Voting Rights Act. The fact remains, voter ID laws do not discriminate or disenfranchise; they ensure integrity at the ballot box,” he said in a statement. The Washington, D.C.-based panel concluded that the voter ID law was “not enacted for a discriminatory purpose” and precleared the law for any election in 2013. But it blocked the state from implementing the law this year “given the short time left before the 2012 elections, and given the numerous steps necessary to properly implement the law — particularly the new ‘reasonable impediment’ provision — and ensure that the law would not have discriminatory retrogressive effects on African-American voters.”

National: Congressman opens voting rights probe of tea party group | latimes.com

A Maryland congressman has opened an investigation of a group that has tried to remove thousands of voters from registration rolls across the nation in advance of the presidential election. The inquiry by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings , a Democrat, is being started a week after Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) urged the Justice Department to enforce voting rights laws, citing a Los Angeles Times article detailing attempts by an Ohio offshoot of the group, True the Vote, to strike hundreds of students and others from voting rolls. “At some point, an effort to challenge voter registrations by the thousands without any legitimate basis may be evidence of illegal voter suppression,” Cummings told True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht in a letter on Thursday. “If these efforts are intentional, politically motivated and widespread across multiple states, they could amount to a criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.” Cummings is the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Mississippi: Voter ID Law Put On Hold For Election Following Federal Review | Reuters

Mississippi’s controversial new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls will not be in effect for the November general election while federal officials review whether the measure is discriminatory, the state said on Tuesday. It was the second setback for voter ID laws in a single day, coming on the heels of a judge in Pennsylvania ordering officials there to delay implementing a photo ID requirement until after the Nov. 6 election. Voters in Mississippi approved a voter ID ballot initiative by a wide margin last November. But as part of the implementation, the state provided insufficient evidence for the U.S. Department of Justice to determine whether the new law would violate the Voting Rights Act, the agency’s voting section chief T. Christian Herren Jr. said in a letter on Monday.

Florida: Judge says voter purge can go on | MiamiHerald.com

A federal judge in Fort Lauderdale ruled Thursday that Florida’s purge of potential noncitizens on the voter rolls can go on. U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch said federal law does not prohibit the state from removing voters who were never lawfully eligible to register in the first place. Florida has identified 198 voters as potential noncitizens — among an estimated 11.4 million registered voters — and sent the names to independent county elections supervisors for their review. A coalition of liberal-leaning voting-rights groups had asked the court to halt the purge, arguing in a hearing Monday that federal law prohibits purging the voter rolls 90 days before an election. Attorneys for Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner countered that the state could purge noncitizens at any time because they should have never been on the voter rolls. “We’re very pleased another federal court has ruled that Florida’s efforts to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls are lawful and in the best interest of Florida voters,” Detzner said in a statement Thursday. “Ensuring ineligible voters can’t cast a ballot is a fundamental aspect of conducting fair elections.”