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Published Sunday, May 24, 2009 in Opinion

Civil Rights Act may still be needed as preventative measure

Editorial

Editor's note: Today's guest editorial is from the Athens Banner-Herald.

It is disconcerting that a host of states and counties in this country -- most of them in the South, and including Georgia -- are subject to provisions of a federal law that presumes they haven't progressed beyond the dark days of racial strife, when blacks who dared to try to exercise their right to vote were subject to literacy tests, poll taxes and, in some instances, bloody violence.

Yet that is exactly what Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, aimed at curtailing attempts to suppress minority access to the ballot box, presumes about those jurisdictions. Under Section 5, covered jurisdictions are required to submit any change in the electoral process, including issues as piddling as moving polling places from one location to another, to the U.S. Department of Justice for review and approval, or, in bureaucratic parlance, "preclearance."

Because it's reasonable to ask why the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act don't apply to all jurisdictions in the country, it's understandable that covered jurisdictions would want to press the issue in the courts. Currently, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case brought by a municipal utility district in the state of Texas which argues that imposing Section 5 on some parts of the United States and not on the remainder of the country constitutes discrimination.

In Georgia, Gov. Sonny Perdue has weighed in on the case, filing a brief with the Supreme Court contending in part that this state has demonstrably transcended its unfortunate past with regard to voting rights.

Similarly, Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, whose office bears statewide responsibilities for administration of elections, and who is an announced Republican candidate for governor, has weighed in on the Texas case. In a recent newsletter to supporters of her gubernatorial bid, Handel contends "continuation of the Voting Rights Act has nothing to do with ensuring fairness in elections. It is pure politics in its worst form and a ridiculous solution in search of a problem that left the South decades ago."

With all due respect to Perdue and Handel, there is clear and recent evidence that this state should not be exempt from Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

Obviously, there are no longer any overt impediments to minority voting in this state. There are no literacy tests, and no efforts outside the purview of government to physically keep minority voters away from the polls. But this is a state where legislators, in this year's session of the Georgia General Assembly, enacted a law -- Senate Bill 86 -- requiring prospective voters, after Jan. 1 of next year, to provide proof of citizenship before being allowed to register to vote.

On its face, that's not a bad public policy goal. But there are a couple of problems with Senate Bill 86.

First, it requires prospective voters to show a driver's license, state ID card, or a photocopy of a birth certificate as proof of citizenship. In most, if not all, cases, obtaining the required documentation will require some expenditure, which might be construed as a poll tax. Additionally, the law will require some negotiation of government bureaucracy, which likely would be some impediment to prospective minority voters.

The law also gives local boards of voter registrars some discretion in determining whether a prospective voter has presented satisfactory evidence of citizenship, raising at least the possibility that some legitimately qualified person might not be allowed to register to vote.

Outside of those technical considerations, it's also worth wondering whether the mere presence of the law on the books might dissuade some legitimately qualified prospective voters from even bothering to try to register to vote, and whether such voter suppression might have been the intent of the legislation in the first place.

It's easy, and quite correct, for Handel and Perdue to make the argument that Georgia isn't the state it was in the 1960s and the decades before. But as Senate Bill 86 clearly demonstrates, neither of them can make the argument that Georgia won't slide toward implementing less obvious forms of minority voter suppression.

Section 5 of the Civil Rights Act might no longer be needed as a curative measure in Georgia, but it remains necessary as a preventative measure.

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