"100 years ago, no one would have predicted we, as a nation, would have elected an African-American President," writes NAACP president Ben Jealous.
Just more than 100 days into the first African-American President's administration, the Supreme Court will hear arguments challenging a key provision of the very Act that helped make his election possible.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark civil rights statute that assures an inclusive democracy, is being assailed by far right groups who are stuck in the 18th Century, Jealous said.
Millions of people - white, black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American - rejoiced in the breakthrough election of President Obama. It was the shattering of the highest glass political ceiling ... in no small part because of the doors that were flung open to all Americans to participate in the electoral process, he added.
The Voting Rights Act's section 5 requires that districts and jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination submit all proposed changes to the Department of Justice for approval-and it prevents hundreds of acts of voter discrimination in every election cycle.
"Our far right opponents are not resting," Jealous said.
Their strategy was to find a test case from a tiny, virtually all white municipal district in Texas, to have section 5 - often called the heart of the voting rights act- declared unconstitutional. Their claim is that we don't need the Voting Rights Act anymore because we have successfully elected an African American president.
Several points prove the conservative racists wrong, including:
- The dialogue and discussion about voter intimidation and suppression has not gone away.
- Voters of color are still being purged and removed from the registration rolls.
- There have been recent cases of voters who happen to have a similar name to an incarcerated felon being turned away at the polls.
- We are still seeing states not complying with federally mandated voting law changes like the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act.
Finally, why are we still seeing racially polarized voting in those states affected by Section 5? the NAACP asks.
"As recently as the 2008 elections, counties covered under section 5 were the scenes of voter intimidation," according to the NAACP. "In Boynton, Florida, people went through African American neighborhoods stating that anyone who has outstanding warrants or owes child support or even has an outstanding traffic ticket would be arrested if they attempted to vote. Police officers were stationed outside of polling places. Officials in Waller County Texas, have tried to prevent students at the historically Black Prairie View A&M University from voting for the past three decades. The county only abandoned this effort to suppress Black turnout when the university chapter of the NAACP brought a Section 5 enforcement action."
In other parts of the country, Section 5 has made sure that Hispanic, Vietnamese and other people of color have had access to a free and fair voting process.
Hundreds of NAACP members and volunteers rallied outside of the Supreme Court to tell the court to "Keep the Act Together" on April 29th, to show their support for the Voting Rights Act, which protects voters against discriminatory voting changes.
Voter intimidation still exists and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act must remain intact.
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