Voting Rights Act to *expire* in 2007?!

[KamaAina]

Found this one towards the end of this report on the Urban League study out today:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=509&e=1&u=/ap/20050406/ap_on_bi_ge/black_america

It concludes with several recommendations for change, including: renewing the federal Voting Rights Act before it expires in 2007; creating a national program to reincorporate former prisoners into society; and, setting aside government funding for universal preschool.

So unless the repuke Congress passes a new Voting Rights Act, it's history before Selection '08?! :scared:

We MUST take Congress back in '06. There is NO alternative.

[tritsofme]

1. It'll get renewed. Like it always does.

Reagan toyed with not signing it, but he did in the end.

[KamaAina]

2. That was Reagan. This is Bush**.

For instance, Reagan toyed with invading the Middle East, but he did not in the end.

[tritsofme]

3. They're not going to alienate black voters the year before the 2008

elections.

Why give us a huge stick to carry instead of passing what is now a relatively ceremonial renewal?

[China_cat]

4. Because they know they can get away with it.

[tritsofme]

5. You don't understand how these guys work.

They will pass it, and then the media will spend the next week talking about how much Republicans care about minorities.

[China_cat]

6. Actually, what they'll do

is trash it completely and then try to show the country how it was actually discriminating against minorities and eliminating it will make it easier especially for blacks to register and vote.

Remember, we now live in Alice's universe and someone shattered the looking glass so we can't get back.

[AirAmFan]

7. IMO Rove is likely to 'renew' the VRA in an unconsititutional way, setting

it up for complete repeal by the USSC.

The VRA requires "preclearance" of gerrymandering and other tactics long used to dilute the African-American vote. But preclearance is limited to Southern states with court-determined histories of deliberate discrimination against African-American voters.

IMO the Republican WH and Congress are likely to engineer the extension of preclearance nationwide. That would set up a Supreme Court decision ruling the VRA invalid, because it no longer would be "narrowly tailored" to remedy court-determined discrimination.

Then Republicans would be free to change state laws in ways that would ensure disfranchisement of African-Americans whereever they are, and would make it virtually impossible for anyone but a Republican to get elected to any state or Federal office.