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Republican Group Stops Voting Rights Act Reauthorization

A small group of Southern Republicans today blocked the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.  Tyler Lewis reports on civilrights.org

The nation's most successful civil rights law, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), which has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress for over 40 years and has been reauthorized four times by both Democratic and Republican presidents, was derailed today in the House.

A small group of House Republicans, including Lynn Westmoreland, R.Ga., hijacked an important vote to renew key protections in a law that has changed the face of American politics. The group claims that the VRA is punitive.

Civil rights groups said that despite significant progress made during the last four decades, there is no question that barriers to full and equal minority voter participation remain.

"Many of those trying to derail the Voting Rights Act represent states with the most egregious records of discrimination in voting-- discrimination that continues to this day," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

RenewtheVRA.org, a collaborative of national organizations with strong experience protecting minority voting rights, which includes LCCR, the NAACP and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the ACLU, commissioned a series of reports that detail continuing threats to voting rights in the states covered by the VRA's expiring provisions.

The House has an extensive record of past and current voter discrimination, which includes the RenewtheVRA.org reports, from hearings they have held since October

The bicameral, bipartisan introduction of the VRA reauthorization bill, named "The Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006," on May 2nd was hailed by civil rights groups as "historic."

In the weeks since the introduction, the House version has amassed 153 cosponsors and was headed toward swift enactment.

The House vote was held up after the Republicans in the GOP caucus meeting today objected to extending provisions in the law that require language assistance for voters who do not speak English very well, according to The Associated Press.

Civil rights groups say that such efforts to stall largely popular civil rights laws have not been used since the 1960's when the laws were first being enacted. Mark Morial, president of the National Urban League said, "Those tactics didn't succeed then and they won't succeed now."

"Those members who held up today's vote represent retrogressive forces that America hasn't seen at this level since the 1960s," said Henderson. "We expect the leadership to move this bill past this small group of saboteurs. The nation's continued progress toward equality demands it."

You would think that after all these years whether or not African-Americans should be given every opportunity to fully participate in our democratic society would be a closed issue.  Not for some in the Republican Party.

Click here and send a message to Congress supporting the Voting Rights Act.

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