Politics
Voting Rights Act to protect African-American and minority voters should be upheld – Obama
“It’s important that we work together to make sure everybody gets a chance to vote and we clear away a lot of this nonsense and, if we have some national guidelines and rules working with states, counties to make sure that people aren’t waiting in line for six, seven hours, that there aren’t new tricks that discourage people from voting, if we’ve got those in place then obviously it’s not as good as good as if we keep Section 5 of the Voting Rights (Act) in place, which I think we should,” Obama said in the interview. “But I think it’s still possible, obviously, for us to make sure that everybody’s able to exercise their rights.”
The White House disclosed Friday that Obama and a group of black leaders, including National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) President Ben Jealous, discussed voter access issues during a meeting Thursday in the Roosevelt Room.
The Supreme Court considered the issue of overturning Section 5 three years ago but sidestepped what Chief Justice John Roberts at the time called “a difficult constitutional question.”
The federal requirement for advance approval, or pre-clearance, was adopted to give federal officials a potent tool to defeat persistent efforts to keep African-Americans from voting. The provision has been a huge success, and Congress periodically has renewed it over the years. The most recent occasion was in 2006, when a Republican-led Congress overwhelmingly approved and President George W. Bush signed a 25-year extension.
The requirement currently applies to Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. It also covers certain counties in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota, and some local jurisdictions in Michigan and New Hampshire. Coverage has been triggered by past discrimination not only against African-Americans, but also against American Indians, Asian-Americans, Alaskan Natives and Hispanics.
Before these locations can change their voting rules, they must get approval either from the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division or from the federal district court in Washington that the new rules won’t discriminate.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
