Republicans want to change the Voting rights Act to include all 50 states instead of just the original 9?

Question

Can we expect the democrats to filibuster that change which would protect the rights of voters in all states?

After all, they filibustered when we tried to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act? West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, the KKK member, spoke for 14 staright hours.

Answer 1

you bet, if they don't vote down the bill they won't be able to pull another PETS AND DEAD RELATIVES voting scam like they did in Florida

Answer 2

To be fair, this ISN'T 1964. As a Republican who lives in the South (it took me years to come to terms with that, but I like it here now), I don't think what they're trying to do is wrong. They just want to renew the act to make it fair & not single out 9 states. The main focus is to get rid of the bi-lingual ballots. That's another topic altogether, in my opinion. I pasted something from an article for other people to read so they can get a better understanding of what's going on. Why would extending the act to all 50 states be a bad thing, by the way?


**The amendment's backers say the requirement unfairly singles out and holds accountable nine states that practiced racist voting policies decades ago, based on 1964 voter turnout data: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

Westmoreland says the formula for deciding which states are subject to such "pre-clearance" should be updated every four years and be based on voter turnout in the most recent three elections.

"The pre-clearance portions of the Voting Rights Act should apply to all states, or no states," Westmoreland said. "Singling out certain states for special scrutiny no longer makes sense."

The amendment has powerful opponents. From Republican and Democratic leaders on down the House hierarchy, they argue that states with documented histories of discrimination may still practice it and have earned the extra scrutiny.

"This carefully crafted legislation should remain clean and unamended," Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., who worked on the original bill, which he called "the keystone of our national civil rights statutes."

By his own estimation, Westmoreland says the amendment stands little chance of being adopted.**

Answer 3

Republicans are planning to change the law to stop black, Hispanic and Native American voters going to the polls in 2008.
Don't kid yourself: the Republican party's decision yesterday to "delay" the renewal of the Voting Rights Act has not a darn thing to do with objections of the Republican's white sheets caucus.
Complaints by a couple of good ol' boys to legislation have never stopped the GOP leadership from rolling over dissenters.
This is a strategic stall that is meant to decriminalise the Republican party's new game of challenging voters of colour by the hundreds of thousands.
In the 2004 presidential race, the GOP ran a massive, multi-state, multimillion-dollar operation to challenge the legitimacy of black, Hispanic and Native American voters. The methods used breached the Voting Rights Act, and while the Bush administration's civil rights division grinned and looked the other way, civil rights lawyers began circling, preparing to sue to stop the violations of the act before the 2008 race.
So Republicans have promised to no longer break the law - not by going legit but by eliminating the law.
The act was passed in 1965 after the Ku Klux Klan and other upright citizens found they could use procedural tricks - "literacy tests", poll taxes and more - to block citizens of colour from casting ballots.
Here is what happened in 2004, and what's in store for 2008.
In the 2004 election, more than 3 million voters were challenged at the polls. No one had seen anything like it since the era of Jim Crow and burning crosses. In 2004, voters were told their registrations had been purged or that their addresses were "suspect". Denied the right to the regular voting booths, these challenged voters were given "provisional" ballots. More than 1m of these provisional ballots (1,090,729 of them) were tossed in the electoral dumpster uncounted. A funny thing about those ballots: about 88% were cast by minority voters. This isn't a number dropped on me from a black helicopter: they come from the raw data of the US election assistance commission in Washington DC.

Answer 4

So what's the upshot here? Even the politicians are getting fed up with having to put everything in English and Spanish?

Good- it's about frigging time. If someone lacks the intelligence to learn the language of the country they choose to live in, how can we expect them to make informed choices at the polls?

Answer 5

Usaully i like easying your right wing pain and angst.
but lately i am very concerned for you, you seem to be develing deeper deeper into some make believe world.


it pains me, you really believe republicans have any intrest in counting votes.

poor child. i pity you.