In reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision last June, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R., Wis.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) have introduced the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014. The stated purpose is to prevent racial discrimination. But what it would really do is force racial gerrymandering, make race the predominant factor in the election process, and advance the partisan interests of one political party.
Shelby County, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act required certain states to get “preclearance” from the federal government before making any voting changes. But the Supreme Court ruled that the formula to determine which jurisdictions were covered was unconstitutional because it was based on 40-year-old turnout data that did not reflect contemporary conditions. Census Bureau data show that black-voter turnout is on a par with or exceeds that of white voters in many of the formerly covered states and is higher than the rest of the country. We simply don’t need Section 5 anymore. The Supreme Court’s ruling did not affect other provisions of the Voting Rights Act that protect voters, and the Justice Department and civil-rights groups have been aggressively using them since Shelby County. All that’s different now is that they must prove their case–as they must under any other civil-rights law.
Read more of Hans von Spakovsky’s and Michael Carvin’s Wall Street Journal article.
