Are U.S. Minorities Being Denied voting Rights?

As more states require voters to produce photo ID we ask if this is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise minorities.

A leading civil rights group in the US has called it the greatest attack on voting rights since segregation. Nearly 50 years since the historic protests in the southern US calling for equal voting rights for African Americans, thousands have marched, again, from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama. In Texas, voters are now required to show photo identification. On Monday the US government blocked that provision, concerned that it would disproportionately affect the Hispanic population – 300,000 of whom do not carry an ID. A similar in South Carolina was blocked in December. Supporters of the laws, the majority of which have been introduced in Republican-controlled states, say they will ensure the integrity of elections by clamping down on fraud and stopping undocumented migrants from voting.

In 1965 the United States Congress passed the Voting Rights Act with the support of a Southern President Lyndon B. Johnson. 100 years after the end of the U.S. Civil War.

Provisions

Section 2 Final page of the Voting Rights Act, signed by President Johnson, the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House Section 2 contains a general prohibition on voting discrimination, enforced through federal district court litigation. Congress amended this section in 1982, prohibiting any voting practice or procedure that has a discriminatory result. The 1982 amendment provided that proof of intentional discrimination is not required. The provision focused instead on whether the electoral processes are equally accessible to minority voters.[12] This section is permanent and does not require renewal. On March 9, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bartlett v. Strickland that the Voting Rights Act does not require governments to draw district lines favorable to minority candidates when the district has minorities as less than half of the population.[13]
Section 5 - Preclearance
Section 5 of the Act requires that the United States Department of Justice, through an administrative procedure, or a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, through a declaratory judgment action "preclear" any attempt to change “any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting..." in any "covered jurisdiction."[5] The Supreme Court gave a broad interpretation to the words "any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting" in Allen v. State Board of Election, 393 U.S. 544 (1969). A covered jurisdiction that seeks to obtain Section 5 Preclearance, either from the United States Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, must demonstrate that a proposed voting change does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of discriminating based on race or color. In some cases, they must also show that the proposed change does not have the purpose or effect of discriminating against a "language minority group." Membership in a language minority group includes "persons who are American Indian, Asian American, Alaskan Natives or of Spanish heritage." The burden of proof under current Section 5 jurisprudence is on the covered jurisdiction to establish that the proposed change does not have a retrogressive purpose.[14] Covered jurisdictions may not implement voting changes without federal Preclearance. The Justice Department has 60 days to respond to a request for a voting change. If the Justice Department or federal court rejects a request for Preclearance, the jurisdiction may continue the prior voting practice or may adopt a substitute and seek Preclearance for it. If the jurisdiction implements a voting change before the Justice Department denies Preclearance in contravention of the Act, the jurisdiction must return to the pre-existing practice or enact a different change. Those states which had less than 50 percent of the voting age population voting in 1960 and/or 1964 were covered in the original act. In addition, some counties and towns that have been found in violation of section 2 have been added. Some cities and counties in Virginia (see below) have since been found no longer to need Preclearance. The United States Commission on Civil Rights recently reviewed the Justice Department Preclearance record and found that the percentage of DOJ objections to submitted changes has declined markedly throughout the 40-year period of the Act: from 5.5 percent in the first period to 1.2 percent in the second, and to 0.6 percent in the third. Over the last 10 years, the overall objection rate was so low as to be practically negligible, at less than 0.1 percent.[15] The Commission's two Democratic members dissented from the report, charging that the Commission had "abandon[ed] the field of battle."[16] In the case Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder (2009), the Supreme Court ruled that the district should have greater capability of applying for exemption from this section.[17]

Upon the passage of the this landmark legislation America's Republican party has worked to find ways to either overturn or circumnavigate the law. With the election of Richard Nixon to the presidency a policy was established which became known as the Southern Strategy which was meant to recruit disaffected southern white racist voters to the Republican party.

Roots of the Southern strategy

With the aid of Harry Dent and South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, who had switched parties in 1964, Richard Nixon ran his 1968 campaign on states' rights and "law and order." Many liberals accused Nixon of pandering to Southern whites, especially with regard to his "states' rights" and "law and order" stands.[30] The independent candidacy of George Wallace, former Democratic governor of Alabama, partially negated the Southern strategy.[31] With a much more explicit attack on integration and black civil rights, Wallace won all of Goldwater's states (except South Carolina), as well as Arkansas and one of North Carolina's electoral votes. Nixon picked up Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida, while Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey carried only Texas of the southern states. In the 1972 election, by contrast, Nixon won every state in the Union except Massachusetts, winning more than 70 percent of the popular vote in most of the Deep South (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina) and 61% of the national vote. He won over 65 percent of the votes in the other states of the former Confederacy. Nixon won 36% of the black vote nationwide. Despite his appeal to Southern whites, Nixon parlayed a wide perception as a moderate into wins in other states. He took a solid majority in the electoral college. He was able to appear moderate to most Americans because the Southern strategy referred to integration obliquely through references to states' rights and busing. This tactic was later described by liberals in the media as "dog-whistle politics."[32]