The fundamental goals and bipartisan legacy of the Voting Rights Act
are imperiled by Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department and
the administration he serves.
The beleaguered attorney general
recently asserted that common-sense efforts to ensure the identity and
citizenship of voters represent a modern “poll tax” — inconsistent with
the Voting Rights Act.
The Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965.
Historic in nature, the civil rights law sought to end decades of racial
discrimination that prevented minorities from fully exercising their
constitutional right to vote.
In 1982, I helped lead negotiations to reauthorize it. The House
passed the reauthorization 389-24, and President Ronald Reagan signed
it. In July 2005, I stood before the NAACP’s national convention in
Milwaukee and announced my intention as chairman of the Judiciary
Committee to introduce and move legislation reauthorizing the Voting
Rights Act for an additional 25 years.
A year later, the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King
Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006 passed the
House 390-33; it cleared the Senate 98-0, and President George W. Bush
signed it into law in a rare moment of historic bipartisan unity.
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