Bob Goodlatte keeps a shovel handy in case the Voting Rights Act needs further burying.
In the summer of 2013, in a 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court eviscerated a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requiring that several whole states and parts of several others "pre-clear" any changes in their voting laws. Immediately, civil rights leaders and some members of Congress began discussing how to amend the law to restore some of what the court had gutted. But any hopes for that got
punctured Wednesday by Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia.
"There are still very, very strong protections in the Voting Rights Act in the area that the Supreme Court ruled on, which is the question of whether or not certain states, there were, I think 11 states, all Southern states, that were required by law to seek pre-clearance of any changes in where polling places are located and other matters like that," Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.
"To this point, we have not seen a process forward that is necessary because we believe the Voting Rights Act provided substantial protection in this area," he said.
Goodlatte said Wednesday that his committee had reviewed the effects of the court ruling and concluded that the Voting Rights Act is strong enough in its current form. He noted that other portions of the law still allow people and states to go to court and seek a pre-clearance requirement if they can demonstrate that voter suppression is taking place.
You would think the chairman of the committee that carried out this review would be at least capable of getting the basics right on something he so casually dismisses. The VRA's mandated pre-clearance applied to nine states, only seven of them in the South, and parts of six other states, two of them in the South.
While the committee majority takes the stance that no changes are needed in the act to restore what the Supreme Court majority took away, that's hardly the view of civil rights leaders. Here's Democratic Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, for example, on the 50th anniversary of the August 1963 March on Washington:
"I gave a little blood on that bridge in Selma, Alabama for the right to vote," he said, referring to Bloody Sunday in 1965 when police beat him and hundreds of other peaceful protesters. "I am not going to stand by and let the Supreme Court take the right to vote away from us."
Lewis called on Congress to fix the VRA. And it looked for a while as if it might actually get fixed, though everyone recognized it would be a tough slog. But the June primary failure of Eric Cantor, one of a handful of Republicans who even was giving lip service to updating the act in the wake of the court's decision, pretty much sealed the fate of the effort. With attitudes like those of Goodlatte now dominating both houses of Congress, it will be a couple of years at least before any such fixes are likely to be suggested, much less passed.