I'm one of those people here who are at best skeptical about the 2004 election being stolen (I do think there was enough voter fraud/suppression in Florida in 2000 to have made the difference, though).
But I'm not at all skeptical of this latest vote suppression tactic (this diary has nothing to do with the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Texas gerrymandering).
You probably haven't heard that much about this attempt yet.
I say attempt because thankfully, it failed.
I'm talking about the following amendment to the Science, State, Justice, Commerce Appropriations Act for FY 2007 proposed by Cliff Stearns of Florida.
An amendment numbered 21 printed in the Congressional Record to prohibit use of funds in the bill to carry out any provision of section 203 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
It's become an increasingly common tactic in the House of Representatives to essentially repeal a law or (possibly far more disturbingly) provide a congressional veto to court rulings by prohibiting funds being spent to enforce it (Mike Sodrel of Indiana introduced an amendment to this very bill, which passed 246-174, to prohibit the use of funds to enforce a recent ruling by the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Indiana to limit prayers in the Indiana House of Representatives.
Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act addresses the voting rights of language minorities.
It requires that for certain language minorities, election information available in English must be made available in that language.
Section 203 has a formula to determine which language minority groups are covered.
According to the DOJ page on it, a language minority group is covered in a specific jurisdiction (usually a county, since county clerks are generally the ones sending out the ballots) if it meets one of the following qualification
- Is more than 10,000
- Is more than five percent of all voting age citizens
- On an Indian reservation, exceeds five percent of all reservation residents
and
The illiteracy rate of the group is higher than the national illiteracy rate.
The Census Bureau determines which groups qualify.
Currently, American Indians, Alaskan Natives, Spanish-speaking groups, and
Asian Americans qualify under the Act.
Cliff Stearns offered the following as justification for the Act.
I think that official government functions of the government ought to be conducted in English. Let me repeat that. I think the official government functions of this government ought to be conducted in English.
He then immediately attempted to claim that he wasn't trying to be a vote-suppressing bigot.
Let me state that my amendment is not about immigration, intimidation or discrimination. It is about assimilation. This is also an amendment about States' rights. States or political subdivisions can provide voting assistance in other languages if they want to, but I do not believe this is good for the United States to mandate.
Sure, Cliff. States' rights. After all, you did such a superb job standing up for the rights of your own state last year during the Terri Schiavo controversy.
Oh, wait, you voted Yea on giving her parents the authority to sue in federal court on what is clearly a state-level issue (h/t to Barney Frank for forcing a roll call vote). So much for your states' rights argument.
Rep. John Lewis of Georgia and former president of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee knows such intimidation tactics first-hand.
During his struggles for civil rights, he was beaten by mobs and by policemen
Here's what he had to say about the Stearns amendment.
Mr. Chairman, the right to vote is precious, almost sacred, and one of the most important blessings of our democracy. The Stearns amendment is an attack on the voting rights of millions of American citizens. It is a modern day literacy test.
This is not about illegal immigration. These are American citizens we are talking about. If the Stearns amendment becomes law, what message are we sending to the Apache, to the Navajo Nation, to the Native Alaskan, to Vietnamese Americans, to Russian Jews, who are all citizens?
These are our neighbors. They are taxpayers. They are Americans. We should be opening up the process to each and every American. Let them come in and participate.
Fortunately this amendment failed 167-254, thanks to 61 Republicans voting against it.
But their reasons for voting against it (except for the northeastern and upper Midwestern Republicans who have generally supported voting rights as an extension of their long-ago predecessors support for abolition) were almost certainly more about the demographics of their districts (groups who are affected by the Voting Rights Act (not just Section 203) who might have been galvanized to get out and vote if they were told that their Representative was trying to take away their right to vote) than anything else. Well, Boehner and Blunt's districts are both very white as well, but as the House Republican leaders, they had to vote NAY to avoid making the party look even worse.
I'm guessing Southern Republicans are more worried about lingering resentment over the Voting Rights Act than a big turnout among blacks.
Here's a table of the percentage Hispanic/Latino, black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Asian the Congressional district of each Republican voting NAY on the amendment is, with the percentages for the U.S. as a whole at the top (data is from the Census website. I can't link to it directly for some reason, but you can navigate to the data if you go to Census Quickfacts, click on a state, and then click Browse Data Sets at the upper-right of the page).
Remember that Republican districts tend to be much more white non-Hispanic than Democratic districts (I don't feel like calculating how much, though).
District |
% African-American |
% American Indian/Alaska Native |
% Asian |
% Hispanic/Latino |
United States |
12.3 |
0.9 |
3.6 |
12.5 |
AZ-1 (Rick Renzi) |
1.3 |
22.6 |
0.5 |
16.4 |
AZ-3 (John Shadegg) |
2.4 |
1.3 |
2.1 |
14.1 |
AZ-6 (Jeff Flake) |
2.1 |
1.0 |
1.8 |
17.2 |
AZ-8 (Jim Kolbe) |
3.1 |
1.0 |
2.1 |
18.2 |
AK-AL (Don Young) |
3.5 |
15.6 |
4.0 |
4.1 |
CA-3 (Dan Lungren) |
4.5 |
1.0 |
6.0 |
10.7 |
CA-21 (Devin Nunes) |
2.3 |
1.6 |
5.0 |
43.4 |
CA-22 (Bill Thomas) |
5.8 |
1.3 |
3.0 |
21.0 |
CA-45 (Mary Bono) |
6.6 |
1.0 |
3.0 |
38.0 |
CT-2 (Rob Simmons) |
3.5 |
0.5 |
1.7 |
4.3 |
CT-4 (Chris Shays) |
11.4 |
0.2 |
3.3 |
12.8 |
DE-AL (Michael Castle) |
19.2 |
0.3 |
2.1 |
4.8 |
FL-18 (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen) |
7.2 |
0.2 |
1.0 |
62.7 |
FL-21 (Lincoln Diaz-Balart) |
7.6 |
0.2 |
1.8 |
69.7 |
FL-25 (Mario Diaz-Balart) |
10.8 |
0.2 |
1.6 |
62.4 |
ID-2 (Mike Simpson) |
0.5 |
1.4 |
0.9 |
8.9 |
IL-10 (Mark Kirk) |
5.4 |
0.2 |
5.9 |
12.3 |
IL-11 (Jerry Weller) |
7.8 |
0.2 |
0.8 |
6.7 |
IL-13 (Judy Biggert) |
5.0 |
0.1 |
6.6 |
5.5 |
IL-18 (Ray LaHood) |
6.5 |
0.2 |
0.9 |
1.5 |
IN-6 (Mike Pence) |
8.4 |
0.3 |
1.0 |
3.5 |
MD-1 (Wayne Gilchrest) |
11.2 |
0.2 |
1.4 |
1.6 |
MN-3 (Jim Ramstad) |
3.8 |
0.4 |
4.0 |
1.8 |
MO-7 (Roy Blunt) |
1.3 |
1.0 |
0.7 |
2.6 |
NE-3 (Tom Osborne) |
0.3 |
0.8 |
0.5 |
6.0 |
NJ-2 (Frank LoBiondo) |
14.4 |
0.4 |
2.4 |
10.3 |
NJ-3 (Jim Saxton) |
8.8 |
0.2 |
2.8 |
3.8 |
NJ-4 (Christopher Smith) |
7.8 |
0.2 |
2.3 |
7.6 |
NJ-7 (Mike Ferguson) |
4.6 |
0.1 |
8.2 |
6.9 |
NJ-11 (Rodney Frelinghuysen) |
2.8 |
0.1 |
6.4 |
6.8 |
NM-1 (Heather Wilson) |
2.6 |
3.5 |
1.8 |
42.6 |
NM-2 (Stevan Pearce) |
1.8 |
5.5 |
0.6 |
47.3 |
NY-20 (John Sweeney) |
2.5 |
0.2 |
0.8 |
2.2 |
NY-24 (Sherwood Boehlert) |
3.4 |
0.2 |
0.9 |
2.3 |
NY-25 (James Walsh) |
7.3 |
0.7 |
1.8 |
1.4 |
NY-29 (Randy Kuhl) |
2.7 |
0.5 |
1.8 |
1.4 |
OH-4 (Michael Oxley) |
5.2 |
0.2 |
0.6 |
1.2 |
OH-8 (John Boehner) |
4.4 |
0.2 |
1.2 |
1.3 |
OH-14 (Steven LaTourette) |
2.5 |
0.1 |
1.1 |
1.3 |
OH-16 (Ralph Regula) |
4.8 |
0.2 |
0.6 |
0.9 |
OK-4 (Tom Cole) |
6.7 |
5.7 |
1.7 |
4.8 |
PA-3 (Phil English) |
3.5 |
0.1 |
0.5 |
1.3 |
PA-8 (Mike Fitzpatrick) |
3.5 |
0.1 |
2.4 |
2.3 |
PA-15 (Charles Dent) |
3.1 |
0.2 |
1.7 |
7.9 |
VA-4 (Randy Forbes) |
3.3 |
0.3 |
1.3 |
2.0 |
VA-10 (Frank Wolf) |
6.9 |
0.2 |
6.6 |
7.1 |
VA-11 (Tom Davis) |
10.3 |
0.3 |
10.9 |
9.1 |
WA-4 (Doc Hastings) |
0.9 |
2.2 |
1.3 |
26.4 |
WA-8 (Dave Reichert) |
2.0 |
0.9 |
7.9 |
4.0 |
WV-2 (Shelley Moore Capito) |
3.6 |
0.2 |
0.5 |
0.8 |
WI-1 (Paul Ryan) |
4.7 |
0.3 |
1.0 |
5.7 |
WI-5 (Tom Petri) |
1.3 |
0.2 |
1.5 |
2.2 |
WI-6 (Jim Sensenbrenner) |
1.1 |
0.4 |
1.5 |
2.3 |
WI-8 (Mark Green) |
0.6 |
2.7 |
1.4 |
2.2 |