Alabama: Riley sez we don't need VRA Sec. 5
The Birmingham News reports: The section of the Voting Rights Act that requires Alabama to get federal approval for election-related changes is an unnecessary burden on a state that no longer needs supervision from Washington to ensure fair voting, Gov. Bob Riley contends in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court.
By keeping Alabama on the Justice Department's watch list for discrimination against minority voters, "Congress wrongly equated Alabama's modern government, and its people, with their Jim Crow ancestors," lawyers for the governor wrote.
Congress in 2006 renewed the landmark voting rights law and the section that requires nine states, plus local jurisdictions in several other states, to prove that changes to election procedures, such as moving a polling place, do not disenfranchise black voters.
Alabama rightfully deserved its place on the list in 1965, but no longer, Riley argues in the brief, filed last week. Of the 3,279 times Alabama has asked for Justice Department "pre-clearance" for changes between 1996 and 2005, it received two rejections, the brief states. ...
Birmingham lawyer Ed Still, an advocate of the Voting Rights Act, said Riley's submission to the justices doesn't address whether the extension of the law is constitutional.
"This is just part of a campaign that Riley has had for a while now - he and his attorneys general, trying to cripple the Voting Rights Act any way they could. This is a whine," Still said Tuesday. "I suspect this is the governor's way of providing some war stories to the conservative justices who want to strike down Section 5." -- Alabama no longer needs voting rights supervision, Gov. Bob Riley says - al.com