Reauthorize the Voting Rights Act
By Wm. Lacy Clay
Member of Congress
I strongly support the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It has been essential in ensuring that all citizens, regardless of race, age, ethnicity and language skills, are guaranteed the right to vote. Not only are citizens assured the right to vote by this act, but they are guaranteed that their vote will be counted fairly and accurately.
Some may argue that we have come a long way since 1965. They may claim that racial injustice and discrimination are no longer condoned as they once were. These same people might believe that no citizen in America is kept from exercising the right to vote by fraud, discrimination, through misleading information or unreasonable laws, but they are wrong. Voter disenfranchisement continues to be a national problem.
In light of the 2000 elections in Florida, it is absurd to argue that fraud does not exist in our electoral system. When thousands of voters were turned away from voting booths because of their race and their political affiliations and numerous ballots thrown out because they favored one candidate over another, how can we claim there is no discrimination in the voting process?
Florida is not the only state that had a breakdown in the voting process. Numerous Missouri voters experienced a similar turmoil. During the 2000 elections I found it disturbing that St. Louis election officials routinely violated state and federal law in the implementation of Missouri Statute Section 115.195.
This statute specifically limits the use of the inactive voter list. It states that the inactive-voter designation can only be used to determine the number of ballots to be printed, to compute the proportional costs of elections or to facilitate mailing information to registered voters. The law does not give election officials authority to purge the names of inactive voters from the election rolls. It is meant to ensure that voter’s rights are protected and not denied because the voter has relocated or the U.S. Postal Service has failed to update its records. St. Louis City and County violated this law by keeping records differentiating between active and inactive voters and then denying those identified as inactive voters from voting.
Another issue of great concern that undermines voting rights is the use of provisional ballots. A federal judge in Missouri ruled that the state is not required to count provisional ballots if they were cast outside the voter’s own precinct. After the 2004 elections, there were reports that poll workers failed to distribute provisional ballots and that many did not understand the legal issues surrounding these ballots. Clearly, the provisional ballot law is confusing; it lends itself to interpretation by ill-informed election officials and must be eliminated.
The Voting Rights Act is vital to ensure that every citizen has the opportunity to vote and that each vote is counted. The Department of Justice has called it the single most-effective piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by Congress. In Mississippi the difference in voting-registration rates between blacks and whites went from numbers as high as 63.3 percent to 6.3 percent. In Louisiana, this number went from 48.9 percent to -2.0 percent. This is nothing short of a testament to the effectiveness of this act.
Although we have come a long way since the days of Jim Crow and the Grandfather Clause, we must realize that there will always be individuals and groups who will try to manipulate the voting process in order to advance their own agenda. We must ensure that the Voting Rights Act is reauthorized.