I'm just disgusted by this vote. Rather than make the temporary provisions of the Voting Rights Act relevant to today's issues, lawmakers chose to keep trying to undo the wrongs of 1964.

The Senate today extended the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for 25 more years as Republicans sought to earn goodwill from minority voters in a congressional election year.

The vote was 98-0.

The temporary provisions of the landmark civil rights bill -- enacted to stop systematic disenfranchisement of black voters, particularly in the South -- did not expire until next year.

But with their control of Congress at stake, Republican leaders seemed intent on extending the legislation before the August recess.

Sorry, I just find this cynical.

I've explained my reasoning before.

Fine, I can accept some sort of renewal of these provisions of the VRA. But none of these provisions is about turning the clock back four decades. Indeed, one of the defeated amendments (opposed by Democrats as a killer amendment) would have targetted voting issues as they exist TODAY, not back when I was still an infant.

A second amendment, offered by Rep. Charles Whitlow Norwood Jr. (R-Ga.), would have made every district potentially subject to the pre-clearance requirement, by including any jurisdiction where voter turnout fell below 50 percent in a presidential election. It would have eased the pre-clearance requirement for jurisdictions with voter turnout above 50 percent in three consecutive presidential elections, presuming that no court had found that discriminatory voting practices were employed. The measure failed 318 to 96.

Wow -- considering voter turnout in elections taking place TODAY was labelled as being against civil right. Applying the law to what happened in 2004 and what will happen in 2008 is not as important as correcting what happened in the election when Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater. Good grief -- would you accept the advice of a doctor who shunned MRIs and CAT scans and stuck strictly to old-fashioned x-rays because that was what he learned in medical school back in the 1960s? Of course not! Then why engage in the illogically absurd practice of using antiquated measures to determine racial discrimination -- and demand that they continue to be used for another quarter century?

One would think that John Kerry would have supported something like this, given his words on the Senate floor.

"Too many Americans in too many parts of our country still face serious obstacles when they are trying to vote here," said Kerry, who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential election. " . . .No one should pretend that reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act solves the problem of being able to vote in our own country. It doesn't. And in recent elections, we've seen too many times how outcomes change when votes that have been cast aren't counted."

While I think the last part of that statement is a line of crap, he is dead on in noting that there are obstacles to voting today. But renenwing provisions and sanctions based on elections going back up to four decades isn't the answer -- looking at current elections is.

But the VRA is such a sacred cow that even the slightest tweak to make it relevant is seen as a desecration and a return to the days of the (all Democrat) KKK lynching "uppity niggers" for trying to vote.

Too bad the Senate lacked the courage to do what was needed.

Posted by: Greg at 02:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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