Posted on 11/15/2005 1:47:16 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
The question of how much longer a handful of states — most in the South, including Georgia — will be relegated to second-class status in our own country is pending before the U.S. Congress.
At issue is extension of expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — specifically, Section 5, that 40 years later continues, without any basis whatsoever — to punish living Georgians for the sins of the dead.
The irony, in fact, is that not only are most of the offenders dead, but their party has been ousted from power and many of those who govern now either weren't old enough to vote or weren't living in this state four decades ago.
House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) was a 5-year-old when Democrats in one-party Georgia were denying blacks the right to vote. President Pro Tem Eric Johnson, 53, the state Senate's most powerful member, didn't even arrive in Georgia until he was 25 — a dozen years after the act was passed. Gov. Sonny Perdue, who is 58, was just old enough to vote.
Under the ostensibly temporary Section 5, due to expire in 2007, prior approval must be obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice for any change in voting standards, practices or procedures in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, Alaska and Arizona. A handful of counties and townships elsewhere are also covered.
It is a form of martial law selectively applied. And yet, the odds are strong that the U.S. Congress will extend pre-clearance requirement, even though the original justification is no longer valid.
Ronald Keith Gaddie, a professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma and author or co-author of eight books on American politics, is an expert on racial pattern voting in states covered by the Voting Rights Act. He and University of Georgia professor Charles S. Bullock III have done extensive research on changes in Southern states since the act's passage. Gaddie testified last month before a U.S. House committee examining renewal.
He noted that in the South today, "Children are more likely to attend integrated schools than in the rest of the country, and an African-American is more likely to have black representation . . . Southern blacks are registered and voting at rates comparable to black voters in the rest of the nation."
"Race still divides the South, but Southern blacks are not helpless in the pursuit of political, social, and economic goals when compared to five decades ago," Gaddie continued. "The context of race relations and the status of minorities in the South are dramatically changed from four decades ago."
Voter registration in the 2000 election, the last presidential race for which complete and accurate numbers are available, reveals blacks to be registered in higher percentages in most Southern states covered by the Voting Rights Act than in states outside the South. In Georgia, for example, black registration was 66.3 percent, compared to 61.7 percent outside the South. White registration was 59.3 in Georgia and 65.9 outside the South.
In 2000 and in 2004, presidential years, black turnout was higher than among whites. In 2002, white turnout was higher.
The point is, however, that the original case for seizing the right of Georgia's elected officials to draw districts and to conduct elections is no longer valid. Now it is rank discrimination, without rational basis.
Johnson, the state Senate leader, is among those who believes that the pre-clearance provision should apply to every state — or none. "It's geographic discrimination," he says, in that it applies to Georgia and not to places with more current voting problems.
He believes, though, that Congress lacks the will to do what's right, and either to extend Section 5 to the rest of the nation or to allow it to expire. "If we can't summon the will to drill on 2,000 acres in ANWR, they don't have the courage to let provisions of the Voting Rights Act expire," he said. (Two thousand acres in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the equivalent, the Wall Street Journal reports, of one letter of the alphabet on this entire page).
Emotions will drive extension. The facts won't.
Georgia, "the fastest-growing of the original Section 5 states offers real evidence of voting rights progress in the last decade," Gaddie testified. Blacks run as well or better than whites statewide. Its congressional delegation has the highest percentage of blacks of any state in the nation. "At the highest levels of government, Georgia has accomplished more than any other state covered by Section 5."
Facts should set us free. But don't count on it.
— Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Tuesday, Friday and Sunday.
If voter identification favored Democrat politicians, they would be all for it--no matter whom it disenfranchised.
Your entire paragraph is false. The voter ID law provided, FREE OF CHARGE, for anyone who couldn't afford to pay for it. Additionally, the government would come to your home and provide the ID if you couldn't get to one of the centers.
It was not a poll tax, it was designed to prevent voter fraud, something the demonRATs thrive upon. Get your facts straight before you try to defend the left's position, and pretend that it's all in the name of fairness. Bullship.
It didn't take long to smoke out this lefty loon. I thought I'd be the first to respond to this du lurker, but by the time I posted about 20 Freepers had already responded to the obvious lies and distortions. The ny city jerk won't be able to respond with any facts, so watch for a diatribe or maybe he'll just disappear under the pond scum.
Yeah, I remember when that amendment was passed (sort of, the date escaped me.) I was in Viet Nam at the time. Thanks for posting that, it was a really big deal for us, I got to cast my first vote, for Richard Milhouse Nixon. But alas I was 21 by the time it affected me. Still it was a great thing to be able to vote.
Ahh, but Georgia has allowed 18 year olds to vote since 1943. So, you and he were 18 in 1965.
I'm not from Missouri but I sure would like for you to "show me" that someone less than 21 years of age could vote in a national election prior to 1971.
No one said "federal" elections. Here's proof for state and local elections:
http://www.abanet.org/publiced/lawday/convo/00/citizenship.html
Old Enough to Fight, Old Enough to Vote: Some History
“Old enough to fight, old enough to vote,” was a slogan that was first heard after the United States entered World War II in 1941. Georgia led the way in 1943, by lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 in state and local elections. Millions of men and women too young to vote were asked to serve in that war. Many people, regardless of age, thought it was unfair. However, it wasn’t until the U.S. was involved in the Vietnam War, thirty years later, that the movement to give eighteen-year-olds the right to vote gained strength.
Oops, I should've said:
No one said "national" elections.
If the law was written in such a way as to allow injustice, it should be re-written so as not to allow it, but, especially in these dangereous times, when international terrorists have declared war on the United States, when the U.S. has been flooded with illegal immigrants, when the veracity of the "Mainstream Newsmedia" cannot be trusted, and corruption is rife in the Democrat Party, a law such as this, to protect the sanctity of the vote, is very much needed.
Refute this:
"Considering the importance of the vote to a republic, protection of its sanctity by careful assurance of the right of an individual to vote could not be more important--both to protect the right of a citizen to vote and to prevent illegal voting."The protection of the sanctity of the vote is the reason the law was written--not as you allege, to establish a deterrent to citizens' voting or to disenfranchise any legal voter.
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