When the House approved a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act yesterday -- with no changes -- it did so with
not a single Democratic defection. But there were 33 Republicans, mostly from the South, who voted against it.
And that is richly ironic, because the Voting Rights Act has helped to propel the Republican Party into its current majority, an unintended outcome indeed.
Yes, those same Republicans -- who were offering Trojan horse amendments to try to gut the Voting Rights Act by altering its formula and by extending it to the entire country -- should get down on their knees and thank God for the VRA.
It probably seems bizarre to suggest that a law that has had the effect of extending voting rights to hundreds of thousands of African-Americans who were systematically shut out of the process could become a vehicle that drives the Republican Party to power.
But that, especially over the last 15 years, is exactly what has happened.
And there are two basic reasons:
1. A Justice Department under Bush I and II packed with Republicans as well as a federal judiciary packed with Reagan/Bush appointees.
2. The drive to create black-majority state legislative and congressional districts.
Two examples how this has worked -- one from Mississippi and one from Alabama.
First, Mississippi, as explained by columnist Bill Minor, the ultimate authority on all things political in Mississippi:
Pickering, himself, in 2002 had benefited from the pre-clearance provision of the Voting Rights Act. When the state lost a seat in the U. S. House he was thrown together to battle with Democratic Rep. Ronnie Shows for the Third District seat.
After the Legislature failed in 2001 to act on redistricting, and faced with a March 1 qualifying deadline, a state lawsuit was filed handing over the re-map issue to Hinds Chancery Court. Judge Patricia Wise, moving quickly after hearing both sides, adopted a balanced plan in December favorable to Shows. Attorney General Mike Moore's staff worked on Christmas day, to rush the plan and related documents to the U.S. Justice Department, and ask for expedited pre-clearance.
But the Ashcroft Justice Department sat on it for 50 days, enough time for a three-judge federal panel (consisting of Reagan-Bush-era appointees) to swing into action and take over the case from the state. Out of the panel came a plan that gave Pickering heavily Republican-voting Rankin County in its entirety (split under the Wise plan) and reduced Shows' black voter base by 12.5 percent.
The Pickering-Shows episode is symptomatic of how the VRA since 1990 has worked to help Republicans across the South by packing black voters into a few districts to elect minority candidates, while making other districts whiter. The result is fewer white Democrats from Dixie.
So, Ashcroft and a Republican appeals court panel outmaneuvered Mississippi Democrats by using the Voting Rights Act.
Here's an example from Alabama:
Jefferson County, where Birmingham is, used to be represented by Ben Erdreich, a white Democrat. But in 1992, Erdreich's district became lily white as districts were redrawn to create a black-majority district. The 7th District now has a black Democrat. But by packing as many black voters into the 7th as possible, the effect was to enhance Republican majorities elsewhere. Alabama today has a black congressman (Artur Davis) but it has fewer Democrats in Congress than it did in 1990.
It was clearly the intention of the architects of the minority districts to give greater voting power to both African Americans and Latinos, two predominantly Democratic groups. Indeed, 13 blacks and 5 Hispanics were elected in the 18 newly created minority districts in 1992. The newly elected blacks, all Democrats, were reelected in 1994, but other members of their party did not fare as well. The Democrats' loss of 52 House seats in 1994 gave the Republicans 12 more than they needed for control. Race-conscious redistricting, the evidence suggests, cost the Democrats enough seats to shift the balance of power in the House. By concentrating liberal voting strength in a few minority districts with supermajorities of Democratic voters, Democratic candidates in nearby districts were deprived of allies in their contests with more conservative Republicans.
And there is another insidious effect of all this. Republicans -- probably as part of an intentional strategy -- do not push candidates in black-majority districts as a way of holding down the black vote:
Moreover, some white Democrats at the state and local level lost because minority voters failed to turn out for the general elections in districts where congressional black incumbents had no serious competition. In several congressional districts, Republicans declined even to run candidates against black incumbents. Since the elections in these districts were not actively contested, some black voters stayed home and failed to cast votes for white Democratic candidates running for other offices.
Given all this, you would think that Republicans would be leading the charge to renew the Voting Rights Act. Well, in fact, the vast majority of them did vote to renew it yesterday.
But not before there was an attempt to gut the all-important Section 5.
Section 5 is the heart of the Voting Rights Act. It is the preclearance provision. That means that any time one of the state's covered under the Act wants to change anything that has to do with voting -- even just moving a polling place from the elementary school to the high school -- it has to be approved by the Justice Department.
So a bloc of mostly Southern Republicans tried to gut Section 5. It's unfair to Southern states, they said, to continue to penalize them for the sins of their grandfathers.
"We have repented and we have reformed," said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga.
Rep. terry Everett, R-AL, argued that there is just no evidence that Southern states continue to discriminate:
"I simply cannot vote to sentence Alabama to an additional 25 years under the foot of the Justice Department in the absence of just cause," Everett said.
Westmoreland and Charlie Norwood, R-GA, offered amendments that -- if you just read the MSM accounts -- seem reasonable and fair.
Extend the Voting Rights Act to all 50 states, Norwood suggested. Wow! That sounds reasonable. Especially when you consider how FUBAR Ohio was in 2004.
But, of course, you get down to the details and you see what's really going on.
Norwood's amendment messed around with the "triggers" of the Voting Rights Act. You see, for the VRA to pass constitutional muster it had to be based on specific evidence of voting discrimination. One of the triggers that have been used are the voting results of the 1964, 68 and 72 presidential elections. Norwood wanted to change that to the 1996, 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, which would have the effect of releasing certain parts of Georgia and other states from Section 5.
Pretty clever, eh?
In fact, as Rep. John Lewis, D-GA, points out, under the Norwood formula, only Hawaii would remain under Section 5.
And what about the idea of extending the VRA to the entire country?
Well, that's actually a damn good idea -- because the South does not have an exclusive franchise on suppression of the black vote. Remember Ohio 2004? I'd love to see the Justice Department slap Ken Blackwell sideways.
But extending the VRA nationwide would be a poison pill. It would cause the Supreme Court to rule it unconstitutional. The current VRA has been upheld because it is "narrowly drawn," which basically means it is targeted to areas with demonstrated problems.
So, why did 33 Republicans vote no? Ideology, of course. They can't help themselves.