Jeffrey Rosen writes in The New Republic about the NAMUDNO case: And then, there was last term’s voting-rights case, in which Roberts wrote an 8-1 decision rejecting a broad constitutional challenge to the Voting Rights Act and instead deciding the case on technical grounds. For those who wanted to believe that Roberts was a genuine conciliator, this was a powerful piece of evidence. Like others, I praised his performance in the case as an act of judicial statesmanship.

But, in retrospect, the ruling may have been less statesmanlike than it appeared. According to a source who was briefed on the deliberations in the case, Anthony Kennedy was initially ready to join Roberts and the other conservatives in issuing a sweeping 5-4 decision, striking down the Voting Rights Act on constitutional grounds. But the four liberal justices threatened to write a strong dissent that would have accused the majority of misconstruing landmark precedents about congressional power. What happened next is unclear, but the most likely possibilities are either that Kennedy got cold feet or that Roberts backed down. The Voting Rights Act survived, but what looked from the outside like an act of judicial statesmanship by Roberts may have in fact been a strategic retreat. Moreover, rather than following the principled alternative suggested by David Souter at the oral argument--holding that the people who were challenging the Voting Rights Act had no standing to bring the lawsuit--Roberts opted to rewrite the statute in a way that Congress never intended. That way, Roberts was still able to express his constitutional doubts about the law-as well as his doubts about landmark Supreme Court precedents from the civil rights era, which he mischaracterized and seemed ready to overrule.
-- Read the whole article --> Roberts Versus Roberts | The New Republic

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The Voting Section has posted ads seeking to fill a total of up to 14 civil rights analyst positions to review voting changes under the preclearance provisions of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

There are four ads - two are open to all citizens and two are “status eligible” ads. Two ads require proficiency in one of several languages, while the other two ads state a preference, but not a requirement, for such language proficiency.

The ads describe the procedures for applying. Ad 1 Ad 2 Ad 3 Ad 4

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In commemoration of the 45th Anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" and the enactment of the Voting Rights Act, please join us in Selma on Friday, March 5th for an important discussion about what's at stake in the upcoming 2010 Census and the continuing need for the protections of the Voting Rights Act.

An informational flyer about the panels is attached. The event is free and open to the public.

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The American Prospect has an article online, The Battle for Voting Rights, that makes me a little uneasy.

I'll wait while you go read it.

I know and have worked with several of the people mentioned in the article. I first met Chris Coates when he was at the ACLU Voting Rights Project. Gilda Daniels worked for me at the Lawyers' Committee. Chris Herren worked for me before he went to law school. I worked with John Tanner for years when he was at the Voting Section and I was in private practice or at the Lawyers' Committee.

I can't pretend to have any inside knowledge of this story. I view it simply as an outsider who is very interested in the work of the Voting Rights Section. I feel I should say something like the neighbors always say when someone is arrested for a crime. "He seemed like a nice man."

But as for the work of the Voting Section, it must get back on track to protecting the voting rights of Americans. I hope and pray that Chris Herren can guide it properly.

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The Government Accountability Office has released a 180-page report on the enforcement efforts of the Justice Department during fiscal years 2001-07. The summary on the Voting Section says:

From fiscal years 2001 through 2007, the Voting Section was responsible for enforcing federal statutes that protect the voting rights of racial and language minorities, disabled and illiterate persons, and overseas and military personnel. During the 7-year period, the Section initiated more matters (367 of 442) and cases (39 of 56) under the Voting Rights Act than the other statutes it enforced, and primarily on behalf of language minority groups (246 of 367 matters and 30 of 56 cases). According to aggregate time data for the 7-year period, the Voting Section spent the greatest total percentage of time (52 percent) on administrative reviews of proposed changes in the voting practices and procedures of certain jurisdictions covered under section 5 of the VRA, such as a proposed redistricting plan––which would make changes to the geographic boundaries of voting districts––or the relocation of a polling place, as compared with cases (33 percent) or matters (14 percent).

Read or download the report --> U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: Information on Employment Litigation, Housing and Civil Enforcement, Voting, and Special Litigation Sections’ Enforcement Efforts from Fiscal Years 2001 through 2007

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James Tucker's new book, The Battle over Bilingual Ballots: Language Minorities and Political Access Under the Voting Rights Act has been published by Ashgate. For information on the book, including a table of contents, preface, and index (you can give it the old Washington-once-over to see if you are listed in the index), go here. There is also a discount link there, as well.
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The Birmingham News reports: Calera officials received permission Friday from the U.S. Department of Justice to proceed with Nov. 10 municipal elections.

The decision came 13 months after city leaders learned that the Justice Department would not accept the voting boundaries used in the 2008 municipal elections last August. Justice Department officials objected to the boundaries, which eliminated the city's sole minority district. As a result, Mayor George Roy and the incumbent city council have remained in office. ...

In July, the City Council passed a temporary voting plan calling for six at-large council seats instead of the current five council members representing five districts. A new plan will be developed based on data from the 2010 Census. ...

"The city's adoption of the at-large, limited voting plan with six council members reflects a good-faith effort to effectively remedy the concerns raised in our objection," the letter from Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general, reads in part. -- Read the whole story at --> Justice Department says OK to Calera election plan - al.com

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The Saint Louis University Public Law Review invites the submission of article abstracts relating to its Spring 2010 symposium theme: Voting 45 Years After the Voting Rights Act.

The symposium, which will be held on Friday, March 26, 2010, will consist of three round-table panel discussions examining the Voting Rights Act, with emphasis on the implementation of the Act and possible future legislation amending the act or creating new legislation.

The Voting Rights Act: Still Relevant Today?
This panel will focus on the implementation of the Voting Rights Act as well as the recent Supreme Court cases regarding the Act.

Voting on the Ground
This panel will consider the challenges facing different groups across the country in registering to vote and accessing polling places on Election Day. It will look at how the Voting Rights Act addresses these issues, the increasing role third parties—such as individual campaigns and groups such as ACORN—play in the voting process, and whether additional government legislation or intervention is needed.

Voting in the Future
This panel will focus on possible amendments or alternatives to the Voting Rights Act and what can be done to increase registration and voter access to polls.

Invitations to present and publish will be made by the Editorial Board following review of the submitted abstracts, which should be limited to 300 words and represent original, unpublished work. Abstracts must be received by October 1, 2009 to be considered, and responses to submissions will be sent on or before November 1, 2009. Drafts of papers selected must be received by February 12, 2010.

Following the March 26, 2010 conference, final drafts of papers to be published must be received by April 15, 2010. The papers will be published in the Fall 2010 edition of the St. Louis University Public Law Review.

Abstracts may be submitted to Jennifer Beasley, jbeasle6 at slu.edu

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The Birmingham News reports: The Calera City Council passed a resolution Tuesday night calling for a new municipal election on Nov. 10.

The move is contingent on approval from U.S. Justice Department officials, who declared the results of the 2008 municipal election invalid.

The Justice Department did not approve the city's new voting lines used in the 2008 election because Calera's only district made up mainly of minorities was eliminated. ...

City Clerk Connie Payton told council members in a work session prior to the meeting that the city's attorneys advised the council to set the date after talking on the phone with Justice Department officials all day Tuesday. -- Calera City Council calls for a new municipal election - al.com

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The Montgomery Advertiser reports: Much of what happened during the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march occurred along a 22-mile stretch of U.S. 80 in one of Alabama's most sparsely populated counties.

Historians tend to focus instead on much larger Dallas and Montgomery counties, a source of displeasure for many of the 12,600 residents of Lowndes County, especially those old enough to remember what happened more than four decades ago.

That's about to change with Hasan Jeffries' "Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama's Black Belt."

A research project that lasted a decade for the Brooklyn-born historian, it led him to Alabama dozens of times to interview veterans of the civil rights era. He also spent countless hours sifting through archival documents in what began as a doctoral dissertation and became much more. -- Read the full article --> Author brings Lowndes Co. civil rights history to light | montgomeryadvertiser.com | Montgomery Advertiser

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The New York Times reports: Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a son of one of the most storied families in American politics, a man who knew triumph and tragedy in near-equal measure and who will be remembered as one of the most effective lawmakers in the history of the Senate, died late Tuesday night. He was 77. ...

In the years after his failed White House bid, Mr. Kennedy also established himself as someone who made “lawmaker” mean more than a word used in headlines to describe any member of Congress. Though his personal life was a mess until his remarriage in the early 1990s, he never failed to show up prepared for a committee hearing or a floor debate.

His most notable focus was civil rights, “still the unfinished business of America,” he often said. In 1982, he led a successful fight to defeat the Reagan administration’s effort to weaken the Voting Rights Act. -- Read the whole, long story --> Edward Kennedy, Senate Stalwart, Dies - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

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The New American Foundation announces: On June 30th, over 100 people attended "The Future of the Voting Rights Act," a morning conference cosponsored by the New America Foundation and FairVote. The conference featured some of the nation's top voting rights experts, who came together to review the recent Supreme Court decision known as NAMUDNO and its impacts, and to think more expansively about voting rights and representation in the United States. Besides a packed house, as well as an additional 50 people watching via live webcast, a dozen staff and lawyers from the Department of Justice attended, including the head of the Voting section of the Civil Rights division, as well as many other voting rights experts and academics.

Panelists spoke on a wide range of topics, from specific issues related to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to the possibility of a right-to-vote amendment and other reforms like proportional voting which hold potential to give representation to an increasingly diverse nation.

The event video is available for viewing online. Below is a list of the times for the appearance of speakers during the two panels, which can be viewed at the event page: http://www.newamerica.net/events/2009/future_voting_rights_act.

Welcome and Introductory Comments (video)
0:00-8:30 Steven Hill, Director, Political Reform Program, New America Foundation

Panel I
The Supreme Court and Minority Voting Rights: A Discussion of NAMUDNO (video)
8:30-11:38 Rob Richie, Executive director, FairVote
11:55-21:50 Kristen Clarke, Co-Director, Political Participation Group of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
22:40-33:47 Nate Persily, Professor of Law and Political Science, Columbia Law School
33:51-43:35 Lisa Bornstein, Senior Counsel, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
43:49-55:45 Jamin Raskin, State Senator, (Maryland), Director of the Law and Government Program, Washington College of Law
55:52-1:07:13 Edward Hailes, Senior Attorney, The Advancement Project
1:07:13 Questions and Answers

Panel II
After NAMUDNO: Fair Representation in a Changing America (video)
0:00-3:00 Steven Hill, Director, Political Reform Program, New America Foundation
3:00-10:00 Myrna Perez, Brennan Center, Counsel on Democracy
13:58-22:30 Jon Greenbaum, Legal Director, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
23:35-32:10 Michael McDonald, Associate Professor of Government and Politics, George Mason University, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Brookings Institution
32:45-40:40 Amy Ngai, Director, Program for Representative Government, FairVote
41:30-50:18 Steven Mulroy, Associate Professor of Law, University of Memphis School of Law, Shelby County Board of Commissioners
50:50-54:40 Lightning Round, Yes and No style questions for all of the panelists
54:45 Questions and Answers

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The Birmingham News reports: Birmingham City Council members and candidates for city elections are incensed that there still is no definite date set for council and school board elections.

The City Council three months ago voted to ask the Department of Justice for permission to move up the election dates to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act. However, a request was not sent to Washington until May 7.

City Clerk Paula Smith recently sent a memo to the council listing two election schedules - one if the Justice Department approves the new dates and another if approval is not granted. ...

Some council members said they were misled by Cooper into believing the process was much further along than it actually is. --> Read the rest of the story at Birmingham, Alabama's election day remains undecided - al.com

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AP reports: Republican governors offer differing views on major voting rights case at Supreme Court -- Differing views in GOP on voting rights case | TPM News Pages

Note: Because the AP is threatening legal action against those who quote from their stories, I will be mentioning fewer AP stories and will give no more than the headline.

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The Washington Post reports: America's next great battle over civil rights could hardly have a less controversial flash point: the benign decision to move the neighborhood polling place from Jack Stueber's garage to the local

elementary school.

But because Stueber's garage is in Texas, and because Texas once systematically discriminated against its black and Latino citizens, and because Congress wants to make sure that it never does again, elections in the handsome neighborhood called Canyon Creek are a federal issue.

The Supreme Court will consider this month whether the neighborhood's tiny utility board should continue to be among the states and local governments that bear the Voting Rights Act's heaviest burden -- pre-clearance by federal authorities for even the smallest changes in election laws and procedures -- and whether Congress exceeded its authority in 2006 by extending the restrictions for 25 years.

Each time the court has reviewed the law since it was first passed 44 years ago, it has agreed with Congress that the restrictions are warranted. But this time around, a question hangs over the case that is not found in law books:

Is a law conceived in the time of Jim Crow still relevant in the age of Barack Obama? -- Supreme Court to Weigh Relevance of Voting Rights Act in Obama Era - washingtonpost.com

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A group of veteran voting-rights attorneys lead by Julius Chambers, former director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, has filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in Northwest Austin Municipal Unitily District v. Holder. The attorneys argue:

In comparison to Appellant’s limited familiarity with elections, attorney amici collectively have more than 200 years of experience litigating voting rights cases in covered and non-covered jurisdictions throughout the country. This experience has led amici to recognize the persistent need for timely enforcement capable of deterring illegal voting schemes before they are implemented—a task for which caseby- case litigation under Section 2 is ill-suited, but for which Section 5 was designed.

Were Section 5 unavailable, there would be a significant increase in the number of discriminatory voting changes that voters and jurisdictions would be forced to address through litigation. But Section 2 cannot substitute for the prophylactic function of Section 5. In practice, amici have seen Section 2 and Section 5 operate in the complementary fashion that Congress intended. Where minority voters in covered jurisdictions cannot find a lawyer or afford to pay one, Section 5 provides the means to redress new violations of their rights. And where minority voters are able to get their day in court, Section 5 provides the assurance that their hard-won and expensive battles will not have been fought in vain if a jurisdiction repeats similar violations.

Too many discriminatory voting changes would remain unchallenged if Section 5 were invalidated. For individual minority voters, the cost and effort required to pursue Section 2 cases are great barriers to private enforcement, a problem made more acute by the small number of practitioners in covered jurisdictions who are willing and able to take such cases. This creates a perverse incentive—all too often realized—for officials to continue suspect practices because they know most voters cannot challenge them. In contrast, Section 5 serves as a deterrent to such practices.

Amici’s lengthy experience in the voting rights arena shows the importance of Congress’s considered decision to reauthorize Section 5. Without it, minority voters will fail to realize the full promise of the Voting Rights Act.

The amici include the following lawyers:James U. Blacksher, Armand Derfner, Anita Earls, Robert McDuff, Edward Still, and Ellis Turnage. The lawyers are represented by William D. Kissinger, Sujal J. Shah, Erin Shannon-Conroy, Perry M. Grossman, and Sarah L. Bishop of Bibgham McCutchen LLP.

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The Birmingham News reports: U.S. Department of Justice officials said Tuesday that they will not accept Calera's 2008 redistricting plan, which means the municipal elections were no good. ...

"Having reviewed these materials, I remain unable to conclude that the city of Calera has carried its burden of showing that the submitted changes have neither a discriminatory purpose nor a discriminatory effect," Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general, said in a letter Tuesday to the city's attorney, Frank "Butch" Ellis.

City leaders learned the day before the Aug. 26 election that the Justice Department would not approve the new districts, which city officials said were created to correct population imbalances stemming from the fast growth the city has experienced in recent years. Ellis said city officials did not have the authority to call off that election or the Oct. 7 runoffs.

During the August election, Ernest Montgomery, the black incumbent from District 2, lost his bid for re-election by two votes to Eric Snyder, who is white.

Although city leaders have said that African-Americans have become a smaller percentage of the city's population over the years, voter registration and school data show otherwise, according to the letter sent Tuesday. -- U.S. Justice Department voids Calera, Alabama's redistricting plan, which throws out 2008 city elections - al.com

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The Birmingham News reports: The part of the 44-year-old Voting Rights Act that requires states such as Alabama to get federal permission before making election-related changes is still a necessary protection for minority voters, President Barack Obama said Wednesday.

Obama, rebutting a sentiment in some Southern states that they no longer need Justice Department supervision, said the scrutiny remains important in places where blacks and whites and Hispanics are especially polarized in their voting patterns. The threat to minorities may no longer be as overtly discriminatory as refusing to register blacks to vote, he said, but may be that they won't have a real chance to elect their candidate of choice.

"There are probably some parts of the South that ... if you looked at the data, are no longer that polarized. There are other parts that are probably still very polarized," Obama said in an interview with 15 reporters from around the country, including The Birmingham News. ...

"Keep in mind that preclearance is just that: It requires before you make a change to go before the D.C. Circuit (Court) or the federal courts and show these changes aren't a problem. That's not such a huge hurdle to jump through," Obama said. "So I think it's legitimate to err on the side of caution before you started eliminating that requirement." -- Minority vote protections still needed in South, Obama tells regional reporters - al.com

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The Supreme Court has decided Bartlett v. Strickland, No. 07-689. The Justices divided 3-2-4.

The Three (Kennedy, C.J. Roberts, and Alito) "concluded that §2 does not require state officials to draw election-district lines to allow a racial minority that would make up less than 50 percent of the voting-age population in the redrawn district to join with crossover voters to elect the minority’s candidate of choice. ... This holding does not consider the permissibility of crossover districts as a matter of legislative choice or discretion. Section 2 allows States to choose their own method of complying with the Voting Rights Act, which may include drawing crossover districts. See Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U. S. 461, 480–482. Moreover, the holding shouldnot be interpreted to entrench majority-minority districts by statutory command, for that, too, could pose constitutional concerns. See, e.g., Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900. Such districts are only re-quired if all three Gingles factors are met and if §2 applies based onthe totality of the circumstances."

The Two (Thomas and Scalia) said "the text of §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 does notauthorize any vote dilution claim, regardless of the size of the minor-ity population in a given district."

The Four (Souter, Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer) filed one dissent in which all joined and Justices Ginsburg and Breyer filed additional dissents. Justice Souter's opinion stated, "I would hold that ... a district may be a minority-opportunity district so long as a cohesive minority population is large enough to elect its chosen candidate when combined with a reliable number of crossover voters from an otherwise polarized majority."

Justice Ginsburg said, "Today’s decision returns the ball to Congress’ court. The Legislature has just cause to clarify beyond debate the appropriate reading of §2." [Can the introduction of a Voting Rights Act of 2009 be far?]

Justice Breyer's opinion asks, "Why not use a numerical gateway rule that looks more directly at the relevant question: Is the minority bloc large enough, is it cohesive enough, is the necessary majority crossover vote small enough, so that the minority (tending to vote cohesively) can likely vote its preferred candidate (rather than a consensus candidate) into office?" and proposes a a new test: "Suppose we pick a numeri-cal ratio that requires the minority voting age population to be twice as large as the percentage of majority crossovervotes needed to elect the minority’s preferred candidate.We would calculate the latter (the percentage of majoritycrossover votes the minority voters need) to take accountof both the percentage of minority voting age population in the district and the cohesiveness with which they vote."

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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

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The Fifth Circuit has partially reversed the dismissal of a Section 5 case about the allocation of delegates to the Texas Democratic Party convention. The opinion begins:

Plaintiffs-Appellants LULAC of Texas, the Mexican American Bar Association of Houston, Texas, and several individuals who reside in various Texas senatorial districts appeal from the dismissal by a single-judge district court of their claims under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act against Defendants-Appellees the State of Texas and the Texas Democratic Party (the “Party”), contending that the judge should have referred their claims to a threejudge court. Plaintiffs’ suit challenges the Party’s method of allocating delegates to its nominating conventions based on raw voter turnout, a procedure that was not precleared by the United States Attorney General or the District Court for the District of Columbia. Reviewing the dismissal de novo, ... we AFFIRM the dismissal for the State, REVERSE the dismissal for the Party, and REMAND ....

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The New York Times reports: The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would decide whether Congress overstepped its constitutional authority in 2006 by extending a central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The plaintiff in the case, a Texas municipal utility district, has argued that Congress did not take sufficient account of more than four decades of progress toward racial equality that culminated in the recent election of the nation’s first black president.

The court’s decision, expected by June, will help define the Roberts court. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. opposed efforts to expand the voting rights law in 1982 as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration and has expressed skepticism on the court about racial classifications made by the government. The decision will also have significant practical consequences for elections in 16 states. ...

The case concerns the requirement in Section 5 of the law that certain state and local governments, mostly in the South, must obtain permission, or “preclearance,” from the Justice Department or a federal court before making changes that affect voting. -- Supreme Court Takes Voting Rights Case - NYTimes.com

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The Washington Post's Trail blog reports: The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice will send 800 federal observers and justice department staff to 59 jurisdictions in 23 states on Election Day to monitor polling places and elections.

Jurisdictions will include Chesterfield County, Va., which had ballot shortages and delays during the presidential primary that received nationwide attention during Congressional hearings earlier this fall, when voters said the problems cost them a chance to cast ballots.

In 2004, 1,090 observers traveled to 25 states for Election Day. During the deadlocked 2000 election, there were 317 observers watching for problems.

The department is required to monitor polling places covered by the Voting Rights Act or related court orders. In addition, its Civil Rights Section will send watchers to counties in several battleground states.

In September, in response to concerns about voter intimidation raised by numerous civil rights and voting rights groups, the department agreed not to use criminal prosecutors as elections observers, as had been done in the past with observers from U.S. Attorneys' offices. -- Justice Dept. Will Send 800 Monitors to Polls | The Trail | washingtonpost.com

Note: the story has a list of counties with federal monitors.

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The Birmingham News reports: The federal government filed a lawsuit against the city of Calera in U.S. District Court, alleging the city's new voting boundaries violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965. ...

The lawsuit says Calera's new voting districts, which eliminated the city's sole mostly minority district, were not approved before the municipal elections. The Justice Department has said the new boundaries may be unfair to minorities.

The lawsuit confirms that the newly elected officials in Calera will not be able to take office on Monday, unless the districts are approved before then. The sitting mayor and council will remain in office until the lawsuit is resolved. ...

During a recent meeting, Ellis told city officials the Justice Department does not trust the population and race data submitted by Calera. The Justice Department has asked the city for more specific information. -- U.S. government sues Calera over voting districts - al.com

The article does not explain that the City has entered into a consent decree. Both the complaint and the consent decree are attached.

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The New York Times reports: The Supreme Court returned Tuesday to the question of how to take account of race in drawing election districts, hearing arguments in a case that is likely to resolve a question the court has left open five times: Must a minority group constitute a majority in a given district before an important protection of the federal Voting Rights Act kicks in?

Christopher G. Browning Jr., North Carolina’s solicitor general, defended the decision of officials there to violate a state law in order to create a district that included about 39 percent of the black voting-age population, saying the Voting Rights Act required the creation of the district to prevent the dilution of the minority group’s ability to elect a representative of its choice.

The fact that the district did not include a majority of black voters was a virtue, Mr. Browning said. True, he said, minority voters would be able to elect a representative of their choice only with the aid of voters from other groups. “Coalition districts help us in reaching the point where race will no longer matter,” Mr. Browning said. -- Justices Weigh Race in North Carolina Case - NYTimes.com

The Washington Post also reports on the case: The court's decision will affect the redrawing of political lines after the 2010 census and is of particular concern to civil rights leaders and the Congressional Black Caucus. Nearly half of the caucus's members were elected from coalition districts, and some worry that redistricting could threaten them or future black candidates if states do not fear lawsuits over reapportionment decisions.

If yesterday's oral argument is any indication, the court may be moving in a different direction. Several conservative justices indicated support for maintaining the "50 percent rule" supported by most lower courts -- that vote-dilution lawsuits can be filed only when minorities can show that they would constitute more than half the population if the district in question were redrawn again.

Justice Antonin Scalia said North Carolina's position would lead to more litigation and "inject" the courts "into this very political game much more frequently than we now are."

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the success of coalition districts in electing black candidates "would be evidence that the Voting Rights Act has succeeded, rather than evidence that you need to apply it more broadly."

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, often the deciding vote when the court splits along ideological lines, sarcastically referred to coalition districts as a "brave new world" where "race is the key factor" in drawing political lines. -- Justices Hear Voting Rights Case

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The Birmingham News reports: The picture of who will represent District 1 on the Jefferson County Commission became crystal clear for the first time in a year following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week in the last lawsuit over the issue.

George Bowman will remain in office until after the Nov. 4 election results are certified, lawyers in the case said Tuesday. Then William Bell will take over.

Bell, a Birmingham city councilman, is the sole candidate for the commission seat on the Nov. 4 ballot. Bell's term will end in 2010, when all five commission seats go before voters.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed an appeal filed by Gov. Bob Riley in a lawsuit challenging his right to appoint Bowman to the commission. -- William Bell to take office after Nov. 4 - al.com

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SCOTUSblog reports: Urging the Supreme Court to curb Congress’ powers to enforce the voting rights declared by the Constitution’s Fifteenth Amendment, a public utility district in Texas on Monday filed a sweeping challenge to the constitutionality of the extension of the federal Voting Rights Act’s long-controversial Section 5. In an appeal that will require five Justices to resolve, the district filed in Northwest Austin Municipal District Number One v. Mukasey. ...

“The Court should find,” the appeal argued, “that the 2006 enactment of Section 5, which consigns broad swaths of the Nation to apparently perpetual federal receivership based on 40-year-old evidence, fails” the Court’s strict test for judging congressional authority to implement the Reconstruction-era Amendments. That test is whether a federal law to enforce one of those Amendments is “congruent” with and “proportional” to the problem Congress addressed — a test that the Court adopted for reviewing laws passed under the Fourteenth Amendment. -- Court asked to strike down vote law

The post has links to the JS and the decision below.

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The Legislative Calendar of the House Judiciary Committee lists a hearing on "Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice Preparation for the 2008 Election." It is set for 9:30, Tuesday, 9 September.

You may be yawning now, but note that the subcommittee includes Rep. Artur Davis, one of the best cross-examiners I have seen in Congress.

Hat-tip to Gerry Hebert for the information.

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A Birmingham News report begins: Winners in Tuesday's municipal election in Calera may not be able to take office if the U.S. Justice Department doesn't approve a 2008 redistricting plan before November.

In addition, runoffs between mayoral candidates Bobby Joe Phillips and Jon Graham and District 4 council candidates David Bradshaw and Brad Frasure may not take place in October, city attorney Frank "Butch" Ellis said Wednesday.

The problem stems from a redistricting plan the city submitted to the Justice Department early this year, Ellis said. There was no single district that had a majority of black voters in that plan, he said. "That's the basis of (the Justice Department's) refusal to approve. They think we should have done more to ensure continued black representation," he said. -- Calera's municipal election winners may not be able to take office - al.com

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The Birmingham News reports: A panel of three federal judges will decide a lawsuit to block the election to fill the District 1 Jefferson County Commission seat.

In a hearing Wednesday at the Hugo Black Federal Courthouse, Judge L. Scott Coogler said a panel will be chosen quickly.

The suit, filed on behalf of Birmingham resident Doris Powell, calls the election improper without clearance from the U.S. Justice Department. The suit seeks to block the election unless federal approval comes by Sept. 14, the deadline for county election officials to send ballots to the printer. -- Federal panel to hear latest District 1 lawsuit that seeks to block election for Jefferson County commission seat- al.com

Disclosure: Jim Blacksher and I represent the plaintiff in this case.

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Huffington Post reports: A federal grand jury has subpoenaed several former senior Justice Department attorneys for an investigation into the politicization of the Department's own Civil Rights Division, according to sources close to the investigation.

The extraordinary step by the Justice Department of subpoenaing attorneys once from within its own ranks was taken because several of them refused to voluntarily give interviews to the Department Inspector General, which has been conducting its own probe of the politicization of the Civil Rights Division, the same sources said.

The grand jury has been investigating allegations that a former senior Bush administration appointee in the Civil Rights Division, Bradley Schlozman, gave false or misleading testimony on a variety of topics to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sources close to the investigation say that the grand jury is also more broadly examining whether Schlozman and other Department officials violated civil service laws by screening Civil Rights attorneys for political affiliation while hiring them. -- Justice Department Subpoenas Its Former Lawyers In Civil Rights Probe

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The Birmingham News reports: A lawyer asked a federal judge on Thursday to fast track a lawsuit contending the Nov. 4 election for a Jefferson County Commission seat is illegal without prior federal approval.

U.S. District Judge L. Scott Coogler was assigned to the case Thursday, minutes after another judge withdrew.

The suit was filed Tuesday by voting-rights lawyer Ed Still on behalf of a District 1 voter. It seeks to block the court-ordered vote for the county commission's District 1 seat unless the U.S. Justice Department clears the election by mid-September.

The state Attorney General's Office filed the clearance request with the Justice Department on Monday. But Still does not expect a decision before Sept. 15, the deadline for ballots to go to the printer for the Nov. 4 general election. -- Judge asked to fast track suit contending Nov. 4 election for Jeffco Commission seat is illegal without federal approval- al.com

The motion is attached.

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The federal court in Alaska has entered an order requiring the State of Alaska to --

1. Provide mandatory poll worker training.
2. Hire a language assistance coordinator fluent in Yup’ik.
3. Recruit bilingual poll workers or translators.
4. Provide sample ballots in written Yup’ik.
5. Provide pre-election publicity in Yup’ik.
6. Ensure the accuracy of translations.
7. Provide a Yup’ik glossary of election terms.
8. Submit pre-election and post-election progress reports.

The order is attached. Thanks to Neil Bradley for sending this to me.

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The Birmingham News reports: A voter in Jefferson County Commission District 1 filed a federal suit Tuesday asking judges to block the court-ordered Nov. 4 vote for the commission seat unless the election is cleared by the U.S. Justice Department.

The suit, filed on behalf of Doris Powell, said the planned election is improper without clearance by the U.S. Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act because it represents a change in county voting law.

The suit asks for a three-judge panel to block the election unless Justice Department approval comes in by Sept. 14, the deadline for county elections officials to send the ballot to the printer.

"We want an election to be held that is valid under federal law," said Powell's lawyer, Ed Still. "If they can get preclearance in time to print the ballot, that will be fine. But we don't think that's going to happen." -- Judges are asked to block Nov. 4 election unless cleared by the U.S. Justice Department- al.com

Note: James Blacksher is my co-counsel. The complaint is attached.

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John Tanner (of the Justice Department) has an article in the latest Alabama Lawyer on Emergency Voting Changes. By the way, the picture at the bottom of page 295 is not John Tanner.

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This morning, my co-counsel and I filed the Motion to Dismiss or Affirm the appeal of Gov. Riley in Riley v. Plump, No. 07-1460, U.S. Supreme Court. The questions presented are:

1. Whether this Court lacks jurisdiction over the present appeal because appellant’s notice of appeal was untimely filed.

2. Whether section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1973c, requires preclearance when a covered jurisdiction enacts a statute repealing its preexisting law mandating special elections to fill vacancies on a county governing body and replaces it with a provision providing for temporary gubernatorial appointment.

In this case, Gov. Riley argues that this case is covered by the Court's recent decision in Riley v. Kennedy, but our brief shows this case falls squarely within the “routine consequence of § 5” that a state must “administer a law it has repealed,” unless and until it receives preclearance of the new law. Riley v. Kennedy, 128 S. Ct. at 1986.

We also submitted this letter to the Clerk to inform him of additional developments in the case.

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The Mobile Press-Register reports: This south Baldwin city will advance to the Aug. 26 municipal election using districts drawn in 2004, according to a vote by elected leaders this week.

That means more than 1,000 residents who live within 74 areas that have been annexed into Foley since 2004 won't be able to vote in City Council races as the five council districts' borders were established before the properties were part of the city.

Residents in those areas will, however, be able to vote in the mayoral race between incumbent John Konair and challenger James Wood.

The City Council voted unanimously to move forward with that plan after Koniar told officials at a special 5:30 p.m. Tuesday meeting that as of that afternoon, the U.S. Department of Justice hadn't approved the proposed 2008 map. That left city leaders no choice but to use the already approved 2004 map, Konair said. -- Districts from 2004 to be used for voting- al.com

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The Montgomery Advertiser reports: It isn't often that young people have an opportunity to learn history from someone who actually lived it.

That's what Montgomery youngsters got Friday afternoon at the Lowndes County Interpretive Center where civil rights lessons are learned every day.

Joseph Glover kept boys and girls from the Houston Hill Summer Camp spellbound, telling them what it was like to live in a tent for 21/2 years.

He and sharecropper relatives were forced off land they had tilled for years after owners of the property punished them for taking part in efforts to register to vote. -- montgomeryadvertiser.com | Montgomery Advertiser

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Baldwin County Now.com reports: A letter from the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division concerning Foley’s recently submitted redistricting plan has raised questions for now about the upcoming municipal election slated for Aug. 26.

Indeed, who would run the city should a mayor and council be prevented by the Justice Department from taking office is one of the points now being researched, according to City Administrator Perry Wilbourne.

Wilbourne, in comments made Thursday, said the city received a four-page, 11-point letter from the Justice Department on Monday afternoon, June 16, a letter he saw for the first time on Tuesday.

“Each will require a response from us,” said Wilbourne of the 11 points.

“This is where they’re questioning the (redistricting) plan, they’re then asking us to explain more of the methodolgies.” -- Municipal election up in air over redistricting - Baldwin County NOW - A Gulf Coast Information Source for South Alabama

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Indian Country Today reports: Plenty of attention has been paid to the importance of the Native vote this election season, but less scrutiny has focused on whether American Indians - especially those who are largely proficient in their tribal languages over English - have been given sufficient resources to understand ballots and other election materials.

The issue is reaching a boiling point for members of four tribal communities in Alaska, who are currently arguing in federal court that state and local election officials haven t provided them with effective oral language assistance and voting materials in their traditional Yup ik language. Yup ik is the primary form of communication for Natives in the Bethel, Alaska, region.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Native American Rights Fund, both of which are representing the Native plaintiffs in the case, say that with the exception of two poorly translated radio ads in 2006, no other election information has been provided to date in the Yup ik language. ...

The Alaska Natives filed a motion in Alaska U.S. District Court in May, arguing that election officials have violated provisions of the Voting Rights Act. In mid-June, the court scheduled a hearing before a three-member judge panel in July to determine the validity of the plaintiffs claims. -- Not speaking our language : ICT 2008/06/20

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The Dallas Morning News reports: An unsuccessful school board candidate filed a federal lawsuit today alleging that the Irving school district’s system of at-large elections for trustees violates the law by denying representation to the school district’s Hispanic citizens.

Manuel Benavidez, who twice ran unsuccessfully for a place on the Irving school board, is the named plaintiff in the lawsuit, which was filed by attorneys for the Dallas firm Bickel & Brewer. The named defendants are Irving ISD and its seven elected trustees. -- Voting lawsuit filed today against Irving school district | Denton Record-Chronicle | News for Denton County, Texas | Latest News

Note: the case is not on Pacer yet. If anyone has the complaint, please email it to me for posting.

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From a press release of the Commission: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will be holding a briefing to review Department of Justice plans to monitor voting rights enforcement for the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. Among the topics expected to be addressed are voting registration issues, the best ways to address claims of voter fraud and voter intimidation, and the overall proper role of the Department of Justice in election matters.

The panelists include: Christopher Coates, Chief of the Voting Rights section of the Department s Civil Rights Division; William Welch, Chief of the Public Integrity Section of the Department s Criminal Division; Daniel P. Tokaji, Associate Professor of Law at the Ohio State University s Moritz College of Law, and the Associate Director of Election Law @ Moritz; Hans von Spakovsky, former FEC Commissioner and Former Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights; and Paul F. Hancock, a partner with the law firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis, LLP and former high-ranking career attorney with the Civil Rights Division. -- Civil Rights Commission to Examine U.S. Department of Justice Plans to Monitor Voting Rights Enforcement for the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

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AP reports: The Justice Department is sending federal observers to Perry County in west Alabama to monitor the primary election Tuesday.

The Justice Department announced Monday that its observers will ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other federal voting rights laws. -- Justice Department monitoring primary Tuesday in Perry County in west Alabama | TimesDaily.com | Times Daily | Florence, AL

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Janai Nelson, "Chipping Away at the VRA One Court Decision at a Time," Talking Justice

Anita S. Krishnakumar, "The 'Mischief Rule' Rule and the VRA in Riley v. Kennedy," Concurring Opinions

Lee P, " U.S. Supreme Court vindicates Riley, King," A Bama Blog

Will Bardwell, " Not-So-Educated-After-All Thoughts On Riley v. Kennedy," WillBardwell.com

Rick Hills, "Civil Rights Lawyers' Ignorance of Local Government Law," Prawfsblawg plus comments by Sam Heldman

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The New York Times reports: A special three-judge court ruled Friday that Congress acted constitutionally when it extended the law requiring sections of the country with a history of racial discrimination to get federal approval for any changes in voting procedures.

The unanimous decision upheld a central provision of the Voting Rights Act, which Congress initially passed in 1965 and has extended several times since, most recently for 25 years in 2006. Section 5 of the law prohibits several states, mostly in the South, and some local government agencies from changing their election practices without permission from the Justice Department or the courts.

Each renewal of the law has been followed by a legal challenge from some state or local agency to this “preclearance” requirement. The latest challenge was undertaken by the board of a public utility near Austin, Tex., which said the requirement conferred a “badge of shame” over “conditions that existed 30 or more years ago but have long since been remedied.”

The Northwest Austin Utility District argued that Congress lacked sufficient evidence of racial discrimination to justify the intrusion on state sovereignty. -- Court Upholds Key Provision of the Voting Rights Act

The opinion is available here.

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Thomas Haymore writes on SCOTUSblog: With a “preclearance” mechanism requiring Justice Department approval before a state may “enact or seek to administer” any changes in “any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting,” Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act has generated its fair share of public debate and legal challenge. In a carefully worded and consciously narrow opinion, the Court this week in Riley v. Kennedy, by a 7-2 vote, carved out an exemption from § 5 coverage, although the technicalities of the fact-specific ruling limit the reach of the opinion. -- Opinion Recap: Riley v. Kennedy

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The Mobile Press-Register reports: If Juan Chastang gets his Mobile County Commission seat back, it will almost certainly be a temp job but it also could net him tens of thousands of dollars in back pay, a commission attorney said.

The current District 1 commission term expires in November, and Chastang has already missed the April deadline to run for the seat this fall as a Republican, said Mark Erwin, a commission attorney who is also the head of the local GOP. For Chas tang to get his NAME on the ballot, he would need to fill out paperwork to run as an independent and round up thousands of signatures by 5 p.m. Tuesday. He could also run a write-in campaign.

Even if Chastang only takes office for a few months, though, it could be worthwhile because he might be eligible to receive back pay totaling more than $75,000, Erwin said. -- Chastang could be owed back pay- al.com

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The Birmingham News reports: The ability of Alabama s governor to fill a vacancy on the Mobile County Commission was strengthened by the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday, but the decision will not stop a similar legal battle over a seat on the Jefferson County Commission.

While the two cases are not identical, they both pit Alabama s Republican governor - who wants to be able to appoint commissioners to certain vacancies - against local Democrats - who prefer special elections by the voters. They also highlight the continued, controversial effect of the Voting Rights Act on the state.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, said Gov. Bob Riley s hand-picking of a new Mobile commissioner did not need to be reviewed by the federal government because it was simply a return to previous law, not a change to election procedures. In the opinion, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court overturned an earlier ruling that Riley s appointment was invalid.

Riley's office called it a "landmark victory" and said they were reviewing how it would play out in Mobile County, where Juan Chastang was appointed by Riley in 2005 but then lost a special election last year. ...

But Democrats were not willing to concede that the Mobile decision would upend Bell's election.

On the contrary, their lead attorney noted Tuesday that Ginsburg herself described the Mobile decision as "narrow," and that the legal history in Jefferson County is different than in Mobile. Birmingham lawyer Edward Still also called Emerson's statement "far-fetched."

"He just won a technical knockout, that's all," Still said. -- Riley wins U.S. Supreme Court decision in Mobile, but Jeffco case continues- al.com

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The Houston Chronicle reports: A federal judge sided with the Texas Democratic Party on Thursday in a lawsuit filed by Latino voter advocates who said the party's method for apportioning presidential delegates is discriminatory.

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery in San Antonio ruled that the spirit and intent of the federal Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters, was not violated, as the League of United Latin American Citizens and other plaintiffs alleged.

Biery dismissed the case. He ruled that the Voting Rights Act does not dictate to political parties how to decide on their presidential nominees as long as everyone has the right to participate.

The Latino voter advocates said the complicated Texas delegate system, which included a March 4 primary and caucus and Senate district caucuses March 29, unfairly dilutes Latino votes by allotting fewer presidential delegates to heavily Hispanic areas. -- Judge dismisses Latino suit over Democratic vote | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

The opinion may be downloaded here.

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Gov. Riley has filed his Jurisdictional Statement in Riley v. Plump. His questions presented are:

1. Whether the decisions of a covered jurisdiction's highest court concerning the validity of a precleared state law, or, in the alternative, an appointment made by the Governor of the State in compliance with those decisions, requires preclearance pursuant to § 5 [of the Voting Rights Act].

2. Whether § 5 requires preclearance of the implementation of a practice in force and effect on the coverage date of November 1, 1964.

3. Whether the district court erred when it entered judgment after briefing and oral argument on the plaintiffs motion for preliminary injunction, without providing the notice required by Fed.R.Civ.Proc. 65(a)(2).

This case relates to the appointment by the Governor of a commissioner to fill a vacancy on the Jefferson County Commission. It is somewhat similar to the Riley v. Kennedy case, no. 07-77, now awaiting decision.

I have the honor of being one of the lawyers for Mr. Plump in this matter.

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AP reports: The Texas Democratic Party was sued Friday by Latino advocacy groups that contend the complicated primary and caucus system used in the March 4 presidential primary unfairly diluted Latino votes.

The League of United Latin American Citizens of Texas and the Mexican American Bar Association of Houston sued in federal court, arguing the party failed to seek clearance required by the U.S. Justice Department for the so-called Texas Two Step. The groups also argue the system effectively discriminates against Latino voters by giving them fewer delegates.

Texas Democrats distribute the state s 193 delegates using both a primary election and a caucus, but the distribution favors state Senate districts that had high voter turnout in the last presidential and gubernatorial elections.

In the March 4 election, that meant predominantly Hispanic districts, where turnout was low in 2004 and 2006, got fewer delegates than others, particularly urban, predominantly black districts. Latino districts favored Hillary Clinton; black districts favored Barack Obama. -- LULAC sued Texas Democratic Party over primary delegates - El Paso Times

Note: If anyone has a copy of the complaint, email it to me. The complaint may be downloaded here. Thanks to Jose Garza for responding to my request.

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The Birmingham News reports:
A panel of three federal judges granted Gov. Bob Riley s request Wednesday to extend George Bowman s tenure as a Jefferson County commissioner, but not for as long as the governor wanted.

Riley now has until May 19 to get clearance from the U.S. Department of Justice for his appointment of Bowman to the District 1 vacancy on the County Commission. ...

Last week Riley asked the federal panel to extend its deadline until after the U.S. Supreme Court and Alabama Supreme Court decide separate cases challenging the governor's contention that only he has the authority to fill vacancies when commissioners leave office early.

In Wednesday's order, the judges denied Riley that much time, but said a shorter extension is reasonable. -- George Bowman gets one-month extension as Jefferson County commissioner- al.com

Note and Disclosure: I am one of the attorneys for the plaintiff. The order is
here.

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The Birmingham News reports: Gov. Bob Riley asked a panel of federal judges Tuesday to grant Jefferson County Commissioner George Bowman more time in office while other courts decide legal disputes over who fills county commission vacancies.

Cases are pending before the Alabama Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court over whether the new commissioner should be chosen by the governor or elected by voters.

Riley appointed Bowman in November to the District 1 seat on the Jefferson County Commission, after Larry Langford resigned to become Birmingham s mayor. -- Alabama Gov. Bob Riley asks for extension to keep Jefferson County Commission seat filled as courts rule- al.com

Note and disclosure: I am one of the counsel for the plaintiff in this case. Governor Riley's motion is here.

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AP reports: The former chief of the Justice Department's Voting Rights Section, who stepped aside in December after apologizing for remarks about minority voters, is now working on election-related issues for the Alabama Law Institute.

John Tanner, who is being paid by the Justice Department under a federal program, also will teach at two Alabama law schools.

The law institute's president, Alabama House Speaker Pro Tem Demetrius Newton, said he personally contacted Tanner when he heard the long-time voting rights specialist wanted some time away from Washington. At the institute, a part of the University of Alabama, Tanner's work includes developing handbooks for public officials on getting Justice Department approval of election-law changes. ...

He will also teach about election law in the fall at Alabama's law school and then in the spring at Samford University's law school, McCurley said.

Tanner said Justice Department policy limits what he can say publicly.

But he is participating in the federal government's program to loan personnel to other government agencies. The Justice Department is paying Tanner's salary and benefits to be in Alabama through next spring. "It's not costing me anything," McCurley said. -- Justice's former voting rights chief now in Alabama

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AP reports: Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism Monday about the federal government s authority to block the governor of Alabama s appointment of a fellow Republican to a vacant county commission seat representing a mostly black and heavily Democratic district.

The case is over whether Gov. Bob Riley needed clearance from the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which requires Alabama and several other states -- most of them in the South -- to get federal approval before changing election procedures that affect minority voters. ...

Local Democrats challenged the appointment, arguing that a special election should have been held as in the past and that Riley's decision amounted to just the kind of voting-rights change that requires Justice Department approval.

Last January, the Justice Department agreed and said Riley's appointment appeared to weaken minority voters. Later, a three-judge panel in U.S. District Court in Montgomery ruled that Riley's move was unlawful and vacated the appointment. -- High court questions federal authority over Alabama in governor s pick - Breaking News from The Birmingham News - al.com

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Here is the transcript of Monday's argument in 07-77.pdf , Riley v. Kennedy.

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Governor Riley has filed a long-winded notice of appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court from the Judgment in Plump v. Riley.

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Thomas Haymore, one the Stanford Law School students who did such great work on our brief, has written this summary of the case for ScotusWiki.

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AP reports: The U.S. Supreme Court said yesterday that it will consider whether legislative and congressional districts designed to help minority candidates win office must do so by containing a majority of minority voters.

The case could decide the fate of so-called “influence” districts, drawn in North Carolina and some other states after the 2000 census in areas where minority populations are mostly in the 40- to-50-percent range.

Such districts are preferred by civil-rights leaders, who worry that creating districts with a majority of minority voters forces legislators to pack minority voters into a smaller overall number of districts, reducing their overall voting strength.

A Supreme Court ruling on the legality of “influence” districts is likely to affect how voting boundaries are drawn after the 2010 Census. --
Winston-Salem Journal | U.S. Supreme Court to look at legality of voting districts

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Gov. Riley has filed his reply brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Riley v. Kennedy. This is the Section 5 case that will be argued on 24 March.

Disclosure: I am one of the attorneys for Dr. Kennedy and the other plaintiffs in this action.

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The Gadsden Times reports: The U.S. Justice Department has approved an election to determine if Gadsden will go to an elected school board or stay with an appointed one.

City Attorney Roger Kirby received the approval today. The Justice Department’s approval was required because of the Voting Rights Act.

The City Council had earlier set April 22 for the referendum on the elected school board and submitted information about the election, including changes in polling places, to the Justice Department. Kirby said people wanting an elected board will vote yes and if they favor an appointed board they will vote no.

If the vote is in favor of an elected board, then the election for board members would be Aug. 26 with runoffs, if necessary, on Oct. 7. -- Justice Department approves Gadsden school board election | GadsdenTimes.com | Gadsden Times | Gadsden, AL

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Amicus briefs have been filed supporting the Kennedy plaintiffs in Riley v. Kennedy, No. 07-77, in the US Supreme Court:

United States

ACLU

Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

NAACP Legal Defense Fund

Note: as additional amici file (Wednesday is the deadline), I will add them to this post.

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The appellees' brief in Riley v. Kennedy has been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court. While I am "counsel of record" in this case, a great team of people listed on the cover of the brief plus several students in the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic have contributed to the brief.

For more information on the case, look here.

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The Rapid City Journal reports: The U.S. Justice Department has blocked Charles Mix County from putting in place a voter-passed redistricting plan that would have increased the commission from three to five members.

A letter from the Justice Department said the blocked plan likely would have allowed Native Americans to elect one commissioner out of five instead of one out of three.

The county failed to show that the redistricting plan, approved by voters in 2006, did not have a discriminatory purpose as defined in the federal Voting Rights Act.

The county has not demonstrated that the change would not have hurt voting rights based on race, according to the letter written by acting assistant attorney general Race Chung Becker. -- Justice Department blocks Charles Mix redistricting plan » RapidCityJournal.com

The ACLU's press release (including a copy of the DOJ objection letter) is here.

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The Birmingham News reports: Jefferson County residents in District 1 could have two commissioners claiming a right to represent them after Tuesday's election for the commission seat.

The scenario hinges on several variables, including the outcome of the election and the next chapter in a legal battle over whether the seat should be filled by appointment.

But if two people do claim a right to the post, a judge likely would intervene and dictate a temporary resolution, said John Carroll, dean of Samford University's Cumberland School of Law.

"Somebody would go to state court and ask them to jump in, and the state court would have to do something to resolve that on a temporary basis," he said.

The conflict could arise if retired Army Gen. George Bowman, whom Gov. Bob Riley appointed to the seat, loses the election and claims a right to the post by appointment. But that may depend on Riley's next move in the legal challenge to his appointment. -- Jefferson County's District 1: Two commissioners?- al.com

Scott Stantis, the News' editorial cartoonist, has a cartoon on the situation.

Disclosure: Jim Blacksher and I represent Mr, Plump, the plaintiff in the federal suit.

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The Miami Herald reports: The Justice Department will be monitoring the presidential primary election in Broward on Tuesday to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act.

Justice Department personnel will monitor polling place activities in Broward.

Under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, Broward is obligated to provide all election information, ballots and voting assistance information in Spanish as well as in English. -- Federal monitors will watch over polling sites - 01/29/2008 - MiamiHerald.com

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The Birmingham News reports: Three federal judges who ruled Gov. Bob Riley needed federal approval before naming a Jefferson County Commission replacement issued a clarification Friday outlining how long appointee George Bowman can remain in the position.

The three-judge panel initially issued an opinion and two-page judgment Tuesday. Lawyers in the dispute over Riley's appointment of Bowman then asked for clarification.

In Friday's filing, the judges say if Riley chooses to immediately appeal the ruling and notifies the court by Feb. 5 - the date of Jefferson County's special election - Bowman's appointment will be voided the same day without further order.

If Riley notifies the court by Feb. 5 that he will seek Justice Department approval of his appointing power, Riley would have 90 days, until about April 21, to receive the OK or Bowman would be out. -- Bowman term may end Feb.5- al.com

Disclosure: Jim Blacksher and I represent the plaintiff in this case.

The plaintiff's motion to alter the judgment is here. Download the Governor's response here. Download the Court's amended judgment here.

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The St. Petersburg Times reports: Six days before Florida's statewide presidential preference primary, the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday approved three recent changes to state election laws and took no action on a fourth because it is the subject of a federal lawsuit.

Despite the federal approval that the state sought, the changes will not be put into effect at the polls because the decision came so close to the Jan. 29 primary.

In a letter to state officials, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division approved legislative changes excluding employer IDs or buyer club IDs as acceptable forms of identification at the polls; reducing from three days to two the period a voter who casts a provisional ballot can provide supporting documentation; and increasing penalties for third-party groups that violate the law in conducting voter registration drives. -- State: Feds approve state election law changes

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The Birmingham News reports: Gov. Bob Riley on Wednesday said he likely will appeal a ruling by a panel of three federal judges that said Riley needed approval from the U.S. Justice Department to appoint George Bowman to the Jefferson County Commission, approval he didn't seek.

"Right now, I think we'll probably appeal it," Riley said, adding that he likely would decide for sure "within the next few days," after meeting with lawyers.

Also Wednesday, Riley's legal adviser, Ken Wallis, said lawyers in the dispute over Bowman disagree on the meaning of the judges' ruling and what it said about Bowman's right to remain on the commission. ...

Ed Still, an attorney for Plump, filed a motion with the panel Wednesday, saying he believed the opinion and judgment said different things about how long Bowman might remain on the county commission.

"I think it's just an editing error," Still said, adding that he wanted the panel to clear it up. -- Alabama Gov. Bob Riley likely to appeal judicial ruling on Jefferson County Commission appointment- al.com

Disclosure: Jim Blacksher and I represent the plaintiff.

You may download the motion here.

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The Auburn Citizen reports: A suburban village has been violating the Voting Rights Act by using an election system that leaves its rapidly growing Hispanic population without representation, a federal judge said Tuesday.

The decision against Port Chester, on the Connecticut border 25 miles from New York City, is expected to force a revision of the village's at-large election system, in which all voters cast ballots for each of the six trustee positions that run the village government.

The likely alternative is a district system, in which each district would elect one trustee. One district would be drawn around Hispanic neighborhoods to increase the chances that a Hispanic-backed candidate would be elected.

Judge Stephen Robinson, who held a trial last May when the village and the Justice Department could not settle the case, said the at-large system "prevents Hispanic voters from participating equally in the political process in the village."

The government had alleged that the at-large system allowed candidates preferred by whites to win all the trustee elections because whites tended to vote in a bloc. No Hispanic has ever been elected trustee or mayor in Port Chester, although the population is almost half Hispanic. The white population votes in greater numbers. -- AuburnPub.com

You may download the decision and order here.

Thanks to Steve Pershing for noting my faux pas in calling Port Chester "Port Arthur." Maybe it is because there is a Port Arthur in Texas and I was just reading that case recently, or I was thinking of Chester A. Arthur.

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The Birmingham News reports: A three-judge panel ruled Tuesday that Gov. Bob Riley should have obtained federal approval before filling the Jefferson County Commission's District 1 seat, but the judges did not immediately remove his appointee, George Bowman, from office.

Meanwhile, a Jefferson County election official said the Feb. 5 election to fill the seat vacated by Larry Langford, scheduled since October, will proceed.

The three federal judges gave Riley until Feb. 5 - the date of Jefferson County's special election - to file a notice that he intends to appeal their decision or that he intends to seek Justice Department approval of his power to appoint a replacement.

If Riley notifies the court on or before Feb. 5, Riley will be given 90 days to get the Justice Department's approval. If Riley misses that deadline, the judges said, Bowman's appointment will be set aside. -- Judges rule Alabama Governor Bob Riley needed federal OK to appoint Jefferson County commissioner- al.com

Disclosure: Jim Blacksher and I represent the plaintiff in this case.

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Two Four amicus briefs have been filed today supporting Gov. Riley's position in Riley v. Kennedy, a Section 5 case. More later.

You can download the briefs here: Thernstrom brief , Project on Fair Representation, Charles Fried brief, and the brief of Florida and several other states.

Disclosure:I am one of the lawyers for Kennedy et al. in this case.

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The 3-judge district court has ruled for the plaintiff in Plump v. Riley. More on this later.

Disclosure: Jim Blacksher and I represent the plaintiff in this case.

The opinion and judgment are attached.

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The Daily Tar Heel reports: The N.C. NAACP is protesting a lawsuit that seeks to make North Carolina comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, claiming the suit undermines the act's intent.

The lawsuit, filed by a group of N.C. Republicans in November 2007, calls for the state's congressional [sic: legislative] districts to be redrawn before the 2008 elections are held.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People claims that the redistricting would concentrate minority voters into fewer districts, leaving the rest of the state primarily white and Republican.

Al McSurely, chairman for the legal redress committee for the N.C. NAACP, said the plaintiffs want to "black-pack" minority voters into one district, which would give them fewer opportunities to elect representatives. -- NAACP protests redistricting suit - State & National

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The Montgomery Advertiser reports: Prince Albert Jones Sr. never lived more than five miles from where he was born in the rural Montgomery County community of Mathews.

A farmer by trade, the 91-year-old Jones was among the first black landowners near the town of Pike Road. He is best remembered as a mentor, a good Samaritan to countless generations of neighbors and an early voting rights pioneer.

Jones died Sunday at his country homestead surrounded by family. He was one of 15 siblings and had 15 children. ...

Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Jones was one of rural Montgomery's first registered black voters, when fewer than 1 percent of the county's black residents were registered.

"Mr. Jones was one of the area's most dedicated advocates for equality and used his good reputation with the white farming elite to help black neighbors and church members obtain the right to vote decades before the enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act," Dees said. -- montgomeryadvertiser.com :: Jones family celebrates life of a pioneer

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Gov. Bob Riley has filed his opening brief in Riley v. Kennedy, No. 07-7, in the U.S. Supreme Court. You may download the file here.

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The Saginaw News reported on 27 December: Backers of the secretary of state office in Buena Vista Township are declaring a "huge win for the community" after a federal opinion that appears to derail state plans to close the branch.

The U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has sent a letter to state officials declaring the pending shutdown "legally unenforceable" because of the potential disenfranchisement of minority voters, among other issues. It's the latest development in a six-month battle to keep the office at 4212 Dixie open. ...

The Saginaw Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People joined the fight to keep the branch open after Land's June 13 announcement. Land said that residents could drive to Saginaw Township's location, 4404 Bay, where she would expand the hours. Opponents decried the inconvenience, especially to those with limited transportation. -- BV secretary of state office won't close - The Saginaw News - MLive.com

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Paul Kiel writes on TPM Muckraker: The changes keep on coming in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Less than a month ago, former voting section chief John "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first" Tanner got canned. And today, his replacement, Christopher Coates, a veteran of the section, demoted Tanner's controversial deputy chiefs, Susana Lorenzo-Giguere and Yvette Rivera. The changes were announced in an email to voting section staff. ...

Rivera has been accused of discriminating against African-American employees. She oversaw the important Section Five unit, which has the responsibility of reviewing election laws in parts of the country with a history of discrimination. Encouragingly, her replacement is Tim Mellett, one of the staff attorneys who in 2003, found that Tom DeLay's Texas redistricting plan violated the Voting Rights Act, a finding that was overruled by political appointees. -- TPMmuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Controversial Voting Section Deps Get Demoted

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McClatchy Newspapers report: John Tanner, under fire for allegedly letting politics influence civil rights enforcement at the Justice Department, disclosed Friday that he is being removed from his job as chief of the Voting Rights Section.

Tanner became the latest casualty at the scandal-plagued Justice Department, which has claimed about a dozen top officials including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in recent months.

For months now, Tanner has been enmeshed in congressional investigations into the alleged politicization of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

At the center of those inquiries was his role in approving a controversial, Republican-backed Georgia law requiring every voter in that state to produce a photo identification card.

His ouster, weeks after Michael Mukasey took over as attorney general, drew praise from former voting rights lawyers. -- Justice's voting chief is being removed - 12/14/2007 - MiamiHerald.com

TPM Muckraker has the text of Tanner's notice to his staff.

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Doc's Political Parlor reports: Sid Browning, Supervisor of Elections for Jefferson County, told the Parlor this week that the county is preparing to hold a special election on February 5th though the Governor has already appointed a replacement to fill the vacated County Commission seat. Larry Langford created the vacancy when he left the commission after winning the Birmingham mayor’s race. Governor Bob Riley has already appointed George Bowman to serve in the seat, but his authority to do that is being challenged in court by Fairfield resident Fred Plump.

The Jefferson County Election Commission “would be remiss not to prepare for the election” given the 1977 Act that, in the Commission’s understanding, calls for an election to replace Langford, said Browning. A 2004 law authorizes the governor to fill county commission vacancies by appointment but excludes counties, such as Jefferson, with their own rules for special election. Riley’s administration claims that the 2004 law voids the 1977 law that specifies Jefferson County fills vacancies with elections.

The Riley administration has lost a similar case in Mobile County pending appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Browning told the Parlor that he sees no substantive difference between the Mobile County and Jefferson County cases. -- Two Trains Going Down Two Tracks

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Press release from ACLU: In a historic agreement reached today with the American Civil Liberties Union, a South Dakota county has agreed to federal supervision of its elections through 2024. The settlement resolves a 2005 ACLU lawsuit charging Charles Mix County with discriminating against Native American voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

“This is a landmark settlement,” said Bryan Sells, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Voting Rights Project and the lead attorney on the case. “It will protect Native American voting rights in Charles Mix County for many years to come."

Under the settlement, approved today by U.S. District Judge Lawrence L. Piersol of Sioux Falls, the county is required to get approval from the federal government before implementing new voting laws in the county through 2024. The settlement also authorizes federal election observers to monitor county elections through 2014 and requires the county to pay $110,000 in attorneys’ fees and expenses.

Today’s agreement stems from a dispute over the districts used in elections for county commissioners. In November 2001, the ACLU wrote to the county on behalf of the Yankton Sioux Tribe complaining that the county’s districts violated the one-person-one-vote principle of the Fourteenth Amendment and diluted Native American voting strength by splitting the Indian community into two districts. Although state law required the county to redraw districts in February 2002, the county commission voted to leave its then-current districts in place.

A copy of the Consent Decree was attached to the press release: Download the file here.

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The Birmingham News reports: A three-judge panel will preside over the federal lawsuit of a Fairfield man who is challenging Gov. Bob Riley's recent appointment to the Jefferson County Commission.

The federal judges are Chief Judge Mark E. Fuller and W. Harold Albritton III, both on the bench of Montgomery's U.S. District Court, and Rosemary Barkett, a former Florida Supreme Court chief justice now a member of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, court records show. The designation of Albritton and Barkett to serve with Fuller was ordered by J.L. Edmondson, chief judge of the appeals court in Atlanta. -- Panel of judges will hear suit challenging Bob Riley's appointment of Jefferson County commissioner- al.com

Disclosure: Jim Blacksher and I represent the plaintiff in this case.

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AP reports: Republican Gov. Bob Riley appointed retired Army Gen. George F. Bowman on Wednesday to a vacancy on the Jefferson County Commission — a move similar to a Mobile County appointment that ignited a court fight now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The high court on Tuesday agreed to review the Mobile County case. A ruling is not expected until next year.

Voting rights attorney Ed Still of Birmingham said a lawsuit has been filed in U.S. District Court in Montgomery challenging Bowman's appointment on the same grounds as the Mobile County case.

Still said the cases are "almost identical." -- Riley's Jeffco appointment brings voting rights challenge

Update: A longer story is in the Thursday paper. -- Gov. Bob Riley appoints retired general to replace Larry Langford on Jefferson County Commission

Another update:
The Mobile Press-Register includes in its story: Cecil Gardner, the attorney who sued Riley over the Chastang appointment, compared the governor's decision Wednesday in Birmingham with former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore's actions in 2003.

Moore ignored a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state judicial building. He was eventually removed from office.

"Riley is taking the same path that Chief Justice Roy Moore took," Gardner said. "And Riley will find, just like Moore, that he's going to get into deep water because of this."

Jeff Emerson, a spokesman for Riley, called that comparison "totally invalid," saying the Mobile ruling had no bearing on the Jefferson County vacancy. -- Riley appointment faces challenge

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The Mobile Press Register reports: The highest court in the land will weigh in on Juan Chastang's appointment to and ouster from the Mobile County Commission.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to review a ruling by federal judges in Montgomery's U.S. District Court that Gov. Bob Riley violated the 1965 federal Voting Rights Act when he appointed Chastang, a black Republican, to represent the majority Democratic, majority-black District 1 on the commission.

The three-judge panel removed Chastang from the seat in May. The county held a special election to fill the post in October, and Democrat Merceria Ludgood handily defeated Chastang.

The Supreme Court will hear the appeal in March, according to a spokeswoman at the Alabama Attorney General's Office. Ludgood's term is set to end in November 2008. -- Chastang case goes to the top- al.com

Disclosure: I am one of the counsel for the plaintiffs in this case.

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The Supreme Court agreed to hear Governor Riley's appeal today in the case known in the Supreme Court as Riley v. Kennedy, No. 07-77. The order from the Court is here.

The Governor's reply brief was filed a couple of weeks ago. It is here.

The Questions Presented by the Governor are the following:

This Section 5 litigation involves two decisions of the Supreme Court of Alabama, Stokes v. Noonan, 534 So. 2d 237 (Ala. 1988), and Riley v. Kennedy, 928 So. 2d 1013 (Ala. 2005). Those decisions concern the manner of filling vacancies on the Mobile County Commission and are based on valid, race-neutral, generally-applicable principles of law. The three-judge district court held that both decisions required preclearance to be enforceable. The State submitted the decisions for preclearance, and the Attorney General of the United States interposed an objection. The district court then entered a remedy order vacating a gubernatorial appointment that had relied on these State court decisions to fill a vacancy that had arisen. This appeal presents the following questions:

1. Whether the decision of a covered jurisdiction’s highest court that a precleared State law is unconstitutional and, thereby, invalid as a matter of State law is a change that affects voting that must be precleared before it can be enforced.

2. Whether the preclearance of a trial court’s ruling that affects voting while that ruling is on appeal and subject to possible reversal establishes a baseline such that the reversal of that decision is a change that must be precleared before it may be enforced.

Disclosure: I am one of the counsel for Rep. Yvonne Kennedy in the case.

I have uploaded the briefs in the Riley v. Kennedy case on my law firm website:
Complaint, answer, trial briefs,
District court decision,
Denial of preclearance,
Jurisdictional Statement and Motion to Dismiss or Affirm,
Governor's reply brief and SCOTUS order.

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The Washington Post reports: House Democrats sharply criticized the head of the Justice Department's voting section yesterday for making a series of racially charged statements, including his suggestion that black voters are not hurt as much as whites by voter identification laws because "they die first."

In a tense appearance before a House Judiciary subcommittee, John K. Tanner apologized for the "tone" of his comments about elderly voters earlier this month and said they "do not in any way accurately reflect my career of devotion" to upholding federal voting rights laws. ...

But Tanner, a 31-year Justice Department career employee, also stuck by his assertion that demographic differences between racial groups temper the impact on minorities of laws requiring that voters present detailed identification, prompting several Democrats to question his fitness to be a senior official in the department's Civil Rights Division.

"You're saying you're right but your tone was wrong," said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.). "I don't know what you're apologizing for."

Toby Moore, a former political geographer in the voting section, told the committee that Tanner regularly engaged in "broad generalizations, deliberate misuse of statistics and casual supposition" in making decisions, including overruling Moore and other career employees in approving a 2005 Georgia voter identification law. -- Justice Dept. Voting Chief Apologizes But Persists - washingtonpost.com

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My co-counsel and I have filed a motion to dismiss or affirm the State of Alabama's appeal in Riley v. Kennedy, No. 07-77 in the U.S. Supreme Court. The State's jurisdictional statement is available here.

The case was brought by my clients under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act for an injunction against the Governor's appointment of a replacement county commissioner in Mobile County. Our suit asserted that the Governor had not obtained preclearance of an Alabama Supreme Court decision before enforcing it.

Earlier posts are here, here, here, here, and here.

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It's officially mainstream now -- in the New York Times: Senator Barack Obama said the leader of the civil rights division of the Justice Department should step down after suggesting that minority voters were not widely disenfranchised by laws requiring photo identification because many members of minorities died before reaching old age.

“This administration has shown very little interest in making sure that all people have equal access to the ballot box,” Mr. Obama said in a telephone interview. “It’s important for all of us to embrace the basic notion that we should try to make voting easier, not harder.”

Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat who is seeking his party’s presidential nomination, was responding to a remark made by John Tanner, the chief of the Justice Department’s civil rights division. In a speech to a Latino group earlier this month in Los Angeles, Mr. Tanner said that a disproportionate share of elderly minority voters did not have identification, but added that it was not a widespread problem because of their life expectancy. ...

On Friday, Mr. Obama sent a letter to the Justice Department, urging acting Attorney General Peter D. Keisler to replace Mr. Tanner for making comments that were “patently erroneous, offensive and dangerous.” -- Obama Calls for Ouster of Official After Remark - New York Times

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AP reports: The head of the Justice Department's voting rights division told members of the NAACP that when he cleared Georgia's voter ID law he didn't look at whether it violated the Constitution.

"All we can look at is racial discrimination, we can't look at anything else," John Tanner told the annual meeting of Georgia's NAACP.

"You can't look at whether it's a poll tax, you can't look at whether it violates the Equal Protection Clause (of the Constitution)."

Tanner said that Justice Department lawyers are very limited in what they can consider when they "pre-clear" state laws under the Voting Rights Act. The voting chief faced criticism after a memo revealed that he signed off on the Georgia law in 2005 over the objections of four of the five career employees who concluded it ran afoul of the voting rights law.

Tanner said Thursday that Georgia statistics examined by Justice Department lawyers showed that minorities are "slightly more likely" than non-minorities to have a photo ID. -- Voting chief defends approval of Georgia's voter ID law

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The Commercial-Dispatch reports: Former state Supreme Court Justice Reuben Anderson has been given “broad authority” to be Noxubee County's superintendent of elections, but he's not publicly discussing how he's going to run Tuesday's Democratic runoffs. ...

Lee last month banned Noxubee County Democratic Chairman Ike Brown from running party primaries and tapped Anderson to ensure whites' voting rights aren't violated.

The judge agreed with the U.S. Department of Justice that Brown and the county Democratic Party he's led since 2000 have committed election fraud and discrimination to keep whites out of county government.

In appointing Anderson, Lee said he's “convinced that to prevent a recurrence of past transgressions by (Democratic Party) Chairman Brown in the conduct of Democratic primary elections, the person appointed by the court must be given broad authority to act in the place and stead of Mr. Brown, rather than simply authority to observe and report.” -- Judge Lee gags Noxubee County voting overseer

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The ACS blog reports: The American Constitution Society's Constitution in the 21st Century project invites you to read Towards Full Participation: Solutions for Improvements to the Federal Language Assistance Laws, an issue brief by Jocelyn Friedrichs Benson, Assistant Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School.

Professor Benson examines the federally mandated language accommodations in sections 203 and 4(f)4 of the Voting Rights Act, arguing that these accommodations, while important and beneficial, are incomplete. She highlights deficiencies in existing voting protections for citizens with limited English proficiency levels, demonstrating how the protections fail to respond to the changing needs of an increasingly diverse electorate. Benson then suggests a number of remedies to these existing inadequacies. -- ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society: "Towards Full Participation": An Issue Brief on Voting Rights by Professor Jocelyn Benson

The ACS blog has a link to the paper.

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The Montgomery Advertiser reports: A second museum along the Selma-to-Montgomery Historic Trail received a $1 million boost from Congress on Thursday as Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. pledged his support for a third interpretive center in Alabama's Capital City.

U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham, drew loud applause when he said the $1 million House appropriation was one of the largest in the nation approved this year by the Department of the Interior. ...

The Montgomery County interpretive center is scheduled to be built on the property of the City of St. Jude, which served as the staging area for the final leg to the Capitol on March 25, 1965. Alabama State University supporters have proposed moving the center from St. Jude on Fairview Avenue to the ASU campus, but that decision likely will be made by the federal government. -- montgomeryadvertiser.com :: Selma gets $1 million for historic trail museum

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The Fayetteville Observer reports: The U.S. Department of Justice has rejected Fayetteville voters’ bid to create at-large City Council seats, according to council members.

The department called members of the council Monday afternoon to tell them a council with six single-member districts and three seats elected citywide — the 6-3 structure — was “not precleared.”

The proposed change was adopted in a referendum in February. The vote was split along racial lines, with whites largely favoring the new format and black voters opposed to the change. -- 6-3 proposal denied by Justice Department

The letter is here.

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Bloomberg News reports: The head of a Mississippi Democratic Party organization illegally suppressed white residents' votes, a federal judge ruled Friday in the first case filed by the Justice Department alleging that whites were subjected to voting discrimination based on their race.

U.S. District Judge Tom S. Lee ruled that Ike Brown, chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee of Noxubee County, violated the Voting Rights Act by issuing different procedures for collecting and counting absentee ballots from white and black voters. The executive committee, also found liable in the case, is responsible for administering Democratic primaries in the county.

There was "ample direct and circumstantial evidence of an intent to discriminate against white voters which has manifested itself through practices designed to deny and/or dilute the voting rights of white voters in Noxubee County," Lee's ruling said.

Brown, who is black, has been chairman of the committee since 2000. He argued at trial that the government's suit was a perversion of the voting rights law and said it was "preposterous" that the Justice Department would claim that blacks, who faced 135 years of discrimination by whites in the state, are now oppressing whites.

The judge said he will consider a remedy at a later date. -- Whites Faced Election Bias In Mississippi, Judge Rules - washingtonpost.com

The 104-page opinion in U.S. v. Ike Brown et al. is attached here.

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A decision on changing the format of the Fayetteville City Council is expected today, city officials say.

The U.S. Department of Justice has been reviewing the city’s request to change the council from nine single-member districts to one with six single-member districts and three members elected citywide. ...

Voters asked for the change in a referendum in February.

Supporters said a 6-3 format would have more council members looking out for the entire city. Opponents say the change would hurt minority representation.

There are four blacks on the current nine-member council.

Under the proposed system, black residents would be in the majority in three districts. -- Justice ruling on 6-3 city council expected

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Brian K. Landsberg writes on History News Network: Voting rights in the United States continue to attract public debate. Voter fraud investigations, faulty election procedures, the extension of the Voting Rights Act and, of course, the 2000 presidential election have all drawn attention. One common assumption is that the federal government must play a muscular role in addressing voting rights issues. Yet this assumption was strongly disputed fifty years ago, when Congress enacted the first modern civil rights law. What happened to change the earlier consensus that the federal government should play, at most, only a limited role in protecting the right to vote? The story of the eight short years between enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 helps us understand the enormous change in the role of the federal government. It is a story of conflict between local power and federal power, of conflict between white supremacists and black civil rights advocates, and of conflict between the dominant white power structure and individual black citizens who sought to register to vote.

Much has been written about voting rights in America and about the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. However, prior works tend to either treat the history with a broad brush or to focus on the dramatic events that led to the Voting Rights Act. It is time to start examining the period in more detail. Rather than demonize local officials or federal judges, we need to understand what may have led them to act the way they did. Rather than treat the civil rights movement as a collection of super-hero leaders, we need to look as well at the real heroes, the rank and file citizens who insisted on the right to vote.

Finally, in all the ink that has been spilled on this subject, the work of the federal government has been virtually ignored. Yet if one were to ask who were the important players in the march from the pallid 1957 Act -- which only authorized the United States to bring civil suits to remedy racial discrimination in voting -- to the 1965 Act -- which substituted federal officials for local registrars and required federal approval of changes in southern voting laws -- the lawyers of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice would occupy a key position on the list. The progression from weak to tough legislation is based in significant measure on the 70 voting rights suits the Division brought between 1957 and 1965. -- Did We Always Care About Voting Rights?

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NPR's Peter Overby reports: President Bush put Hans von Spakovsky on the Federal Election Commission via a recess appointment — no Senate hearings required — in January 2006. Now, von Spakovsky faces a confirmation hearing.

Senators likely will be interested less in his election-law rulings than in his previous job, where he hunted for voter fraud and promoted state voter-ID laws as a political appointee in the Justice Department's civil rights section. -- Voter-Fraud Activist on Election Panel Faces Hearing

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The Los Angeles Times reports: For more than 15 years, clean-cut, square-jawed Tom Heffelfinger was the embodiment of a tough Republican prosecutor. Named U.S. attorney for Minnesota in 1991, he won a series of high-profile white-collar crime and gun and explosives cases. By the time Heffelfinger resigned last year, his office had collected a string of awards and commendations from the Justice Department.

So it came as a surprise — and something of a mystery — when he turned up on a list of U.S. attorneys who had been targeted for firing.

Part of the reason, government documents and other evidence suggest, is that he tried to protect voting rights for Native Americans.

At a time when GOP activists wanted U.S. attorneys to concentrate on pursuing voter fraud cases, Heffelfinger's office was expressing deep concern about the effect of a state directive that could have the effect of discouraging Indians in Minnesota from casting ballots. -- Minnesota case fits pattern in U.S. attorneys flap

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The Baltimore Sun reports: Justice Department investigators said yesterday that they are investigating whether the agency's Civil Rights Division engaged in improper hiring and personnel decisions, expanding an investigation that arose from the firing last year of eight U.S. attorneys.

The internal review will also look into hiring for the agency's prestigious honors program for entry-level attorneys and for summer internships, according to a letter to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees from Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and H. Marshall Jarrett, head of the department's Office of Professional Responsibility. ...

The expanded investigation also appears to reflect the concerns of a growing number of career employees at the Justice Department who have suggested that politics has compromised hiring at the department during the Bush administration.

In a letter this spring to the judiciary panels, an anonymous group of Justice Department employees wrote that political appointees were using politics to screen candidates for the honors and internship programs. -- Justice Dept. probe expands

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After the federal court ordered the Governor to obtain preclearance under the Voting Rights Act before he administers the law requiring appointment of replacement county commissioners, the Justice Department denied preclearance and a request for reconsideration. The Court then granted plaintiffs' motion for relief and denied the State's motion for a stay. The State has now filed a notice of appeal.

However, the Probate Judge has not called the election yet, but has moved to intervene in the federal case and asks the Court to set a schedule for the election that will take longer than the 90 days allowed by the statute. The plaintiffs have just filed a response suggesting a shorter time limit.

Earlier information on the case is here.

Disclosure: Cecil Gardner and Vance McCrary (of the The Gardner Firm in Mobile, AL) and I represented the plaintiffs in that action.

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Paul Kiel writes on TRMmuckraker: So far, Bradley Schlozman has been a minor character in the U.S. attorneys scandal. He ought to be a major one.

To put the case succinctly: Schlozman was the most aggressively political of the political appointees in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. And the administration installed him as the U.S. attorney in a key swing state in an election year. And to clinch it all, as we'll see in our next post, he delivered. ...

By the time Schlozman arrived in Missouri, he'd already left a strong imprint at the Justice Department. The career attorneys and analysts who worked under him in the Civil Rights Division's voting section describe what can fairly be described as a reign of terror.

Bob Kengle, formerly the deputy chief for the voting section, told me that Schlozman "led by power":

"What he sought to inculcate into people was a fear that if you disagreed, if you asked for reconsideration on something, if you pointed out something that was not correct in a decision that had been made, then you’d pay for it."

Kengle, who joined the division in 1984, said that Schlozman would change performance evaluations for lawyers and analysts who disagreed with him. -- TPMmuckraker April 26, 2007 02:27 PM

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The Orlando Sentinel reports: Osceola voters elected the first Hispanic county commissioner in more than a decade Tuesday, choosing former state Rep. John Quinones to represent a new Hispanic-majority district in the first election since a federal judge ordered the end to countywide elections of commissioners.

Quinones, a Republican, and political activist Armando Ramirez, a Democrat, squared off against two non-Hispanic candidates with no party affiliation in District 2 in a special election that was delayed for five months by a voting-rights lawsuit the U.S. Justice Department filed against Osceola County.

Federal attorneys claimed that at-large elections effectively kept Hispanics from winning office in Osceola, where they make up about 38 percent of the county's population.

Quinones cruised to victory in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2-to-1. He tallied 56 percent of the vote to 31 percent for Ramirez. Mark Cross received 10 percent and Joe Day 3 percent of the 3,385 votes cast. -- Osceola voters pick Quinones in new district - Orlando Sentinel : Osceola County News Osceola voters pick Quinones in new district - Orlando Sentinel : Osceola County News

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Paul Kiel reports in a long and detailed article on TPMmuckraker.com: Over the past six years, the Bush administration has aggressively reshaped the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Many career analysts and attorneys have either been transferred or driven out; their replacements are long on conservative credentials and short on civil rights experience.

Here's an inside account of what it's like inside from Toby Moore, a redistricting expert with the division's voting section until the spring of 2006. Like many of his colleagues, he left due to the hostile atmosphere in the section, where he says there was a pattern of selective intimidation towards career staff.

According to Moore, his supervisor and the political appointees in the section consistently criticized his work because it didn't jibe with their pre-drawn conclusions. That was bad enough, he said, but the real trouble came after he and three colleagues recommended opposing a Georgia voter I.D. law pushed by Republicans. After the recommendation, which clashed with the views of Moore's superiors, they reprimanded him for not adequately analyzing the evidence and accused him of mistreating his Republican colleague, with whom he'd had frequent disagreements. But it got worse. Moore said that his Republican superiors even monitored his emails, eventually filing a complaint against him with the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility for allegedly disclosing privileged information in one email (he was cleared of wrongdoing). Fed up, and worried that it was too dangerous to his professional future to remain there, he left. -- TPMmuckraker April 17, 2007 03:41 PM

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The Jackson Clarion-Ledger reports: Attorneys for black leaders in Noxubee County said in court papers filed late Monday that the voting rights of white voters in the majority black county have not been violated.

"And even if disputes about matters subject to election challenge or state criminal law could rise to the level of a Section 2 claim, the evidence here is so insufficient that a claim cannot be made," said attorney Edward Pleasants.

Monday was the deadline for court briefs from black leaders and the U.S. Department of Justice to be filed with U.S. District Judge Tom Lee in the historic lawsuit filed by the Justice Department alleging the majority-black Noxubee County Democratic Party, its chairman Ike Brown and the county Election Commission practiced racial discrimination against white voters and candidates.

Pleasants, one of the attorneys for Democratic Executive Committee and Brown, said the government has failed to prove there exist a procedure or structure that denies equal opportunity to white Noxubee County voters .

The Justice Department has called the situation in Noxubee County "the most extreme case of racial exclusion seen by the (department's) Voting Section in decades." -- Legal debate rages over Noxubee voting rights allegations - The Clarion-Ledger

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Press release: Two former Department of Justice officials will join a University of Texas law professor and election law expert to discuss politicization of the United States Department of Justice at an informal press event at the National Press Club on Friday.

The discussion will cover recent episodes of Department of Justice decision-making, including the dismissal of the eight U.S. attorneys, recent voter fraud cases, partisan enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, hiring of attorneys in the Department and approval of the 2003 congressional redistricting in Texas masterminded by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

The panel of three attorneys will discuss DOJ politicization under the present Administration. The panel includes two attorneys formerly with the Department of Justice -- J. Gerald Hebert, now Executive Director of the Campaign Legal Center and the lead attorney for the Congressional Democrats in the Texas Congressional redistricting suit, and Joseph Rich, who was Chief of the Division’s Voting Section from 1999 until 2005 and is now Director of the Fair Housing Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Both Hebert and Rich served for decades in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, spanning many Administrations.

University of Texas adjunct law professor and election law expert Steve Bickerstaff, joining Hebert and Rich on the panel, recently authored a book (Lines in the Sand) on the 2003 Congressional redistricting episode in Texas, the politicization of the DOJ and the downfall of Tom DeLay. He also was among the persons who wrote a recommendation letter calling for the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General in 2005, but has recently called for his resignation. Like Hebert and Rich, he has lengthy personal experience with the Department of Justice.

WHEN:

Friday, March 30, 9:30-11 a.m.

WHERE

Zenger Room, National Press Club

529 14th Street N.W., Washington, D.C.

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McClatchy Newspapers wire reports: Under President Bush, the Justice Department has backed laws that narrow minority voting rights and pressed U.S. attorneys to investigate voter fraud - policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes.

Bush, his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and other Republican political advisers have highlighted voting rights issues and what Rove has called the "growing problem" of election fraud by Democrats since Bush took power in the tumultuous election of 2000, a race ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's civil rights division when it was rolling back longstanding voting-rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.

Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was a research director for the Republican National Committee. He's denied any wrongdoing. -- KRT Wire | 03/23/2007 | New U.S. attorneys seem to have partisan records

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Joe Rich, the former chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, testified at the House oversight hearings on the Civil Rights Division. His testimony is here.

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AP reports: A state law allowing voters to challenge at-large elections systems on the basis that they dilute the strength of minority voters will stand, after the California Supreme Court declined to review the case Wednesday.

The high court's refusal to hear the case leaves intact an appeals court ruling that upheld the 2001 California Voting Rights Act.

The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights sued the city of Modesto in 2004 on behalf of Hispanic voters there, charging that electing city council members to at-large seats instead of from districts diminished the strength of their votes. Though the city is one-quarter Hispanic, just one Hispanic has been elected to Modesto's five-member city council since 1911.

The city argued that the California Voting Rights Act, which the plaintiffs relied on to demand change, was unconstitutional because it benefited certain racial groups. -- Article - News - State Supreme Court upholds California Voting Rights Act

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AP reports: The U.S. Justice Department said Monday it planned to monitor municipal elections in four Southern California cities to ensure they comply with federal voting law.

Federal observers on Tuesday will visit polling places in Azusa, Gardena, Paramount and Rosemead.

Last year federal investigators visited polling places in the region and determined that Azusa and Paramount failed to fully translate election materials into Spanish, as they are required to do under the federal Voting Rights Act. Authorities also said Rosemead failed to offer all voting materials in Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese. -- AP Wire | 03/05/2007 | Feds to monitor Tuesday elections in four SoCal cities

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The Decatur Daily reports: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will deliver the keynote address next month at the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee that commemorates the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march, organizers said Tuesday.

Obama, a Democratic U.S. senator from Illinois who is black, is scheduled to speak at a March 4 service at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, the site in Selma where marchers gathered in the historic protest that gave blacks across the South greater access to the ballot.

Several dozen other members of Congress plan to attend, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev, said Sam Walker, an event coordinator with the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, which sponsors the commemoration. -- Obama to headline voting rights march commemoration in Selma

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The Commercial Dispatch reports: The U.S. Justice Department finished grilling Noxubee County Democratic Party Chairman Ike Brown on the stand Wednesday as the federal government tries to prove he diluted whites' votes and kept their candidates out of local government.

The first voting-rights trial of its kind resumed today in the second week of witnesses appearing before U.S. District Judge Tom Lee.

Lee is being asked by the Justice Department to impose measures for ensuring Noxubee County's black Democratic Party leaders are fair to white voters and candidates.

Brown was called up Tuesday by the Justice Department to testify as an adverse witness to answer allegations he's politically stifled whites in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

The charges include recruiting a black lawyer with a fake Noxubee County residence to try to defeat white County Attorney Ricky Walker, threatening to keep some whites out of Democratic Party meetings and defying a court order to hold a new sheriff's election after black incumbent Albert Walker had defeated the white-favored challenger. -- Commercial Dispatch Online

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Mary L. Dudziak writes on Legal History Blog: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Thurgood Marshall Law Library at the University of Maryland announce a joint project to make records of the Civil Rights Commission available on-line. The press release, below, refers to the Civil Rights Act (presumably meaning the Civil Rights Act of 1964), but of more value to researchers will be Commission reports, such as a 1961 report on voting rights, available here. While these documents should be available in libraries that are government document repositories, the website will make them much more accessible to a broader range of researchers. Some briefing papers are included, but the collection principally consists of published reports. Some materials are in Spanish. The Commission was established in 1957. The materials appear to range from the early 1960s to at least 2004. -- Legal History Blog

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AP reports: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rose from being an obscure Baptist preacher to jump start the Civil Rights Movement as he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott more than 50 years ago, but there’s not a monument to King in the town where he rose to national prominence.

Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright says it’s time to change that.

During a celebration of what would have been King’s 78th birthday Monday, Bright said he will help lead an effort to build a monument for King somewhere in Montgomery. He said the memorial might be near the Capitol steps where King spoke at the end of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights March and the small frame church across the street where he first preached his message of peace and love in the 1950s. -- Montgomery mayor seeks monument for King Jr.

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The Washington Post reports: Over the years, Ike Brown has earned a reputation in rural Noxubee County as a wily political boss, and his election triumphs have time and again aroused suspicions of impropriety. But talk of his tactics never carried much farther than this small community of sawmills and catfish ponds.

Today, though, Brown, who is African American, is scheduled to go on trial in federal court in Jackson, where he will face charges from the Justice Department that he violated the political rights of Noxubee's white minority. It is the first time that the 1965 Voting Rights Act has been used to ensure white rights.

About two-thirds of the 8,700 adults in Noxubee County are black, and Brown, the local Democratic committee chief, has been criticized for urging people to "vote black" while engaging in an array of electoral shenanigans.

At issue is whether Brown, 52, has directed "relentless voting-related racial discrimination" against white voters and white candidates through fraudulent election tactics, as federal lawyers say, or whether he was merely operating aggressive political campaigns in a milieu that has long been split along racial lines. -- Alleged Voting Rights Violation With Twist Goes to Trial - washingtonpost.com

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AP reports: Iowa Congressman Steve King and hard-line immigration advocates are suing Gov.-elect Chet Culver for allegedly violating the state's official English law by distributing voter information in several languages while serving as secretary of state.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in state District Court, also names incoming Secretary of State Michael Mauro, charging he placed voter information on his official Web site in Spanish, Bosnian, Vietnamese and Laotian. ...

Culver aide Brad Anderson rejected the charges, saying that state election law requires officials to aid potential voters in registering and casting ballots. ...

The issue first surfaced last fall when King wrote a letter to Culver charging that the English-only law requires all government proceedings to be in English. He said Culver was breaking the law by posting voter registration forms in foreign languages on his Web site.

Attorney General Tom Miller -- the state's top law enforcement official -- later issued a statement siding with Culver. He said the secretary of state's actions were legal because the English-only law permits the state to help residents exercise their constitutional right to vote. In addition, bipartisan Voter Registration Commission rules allow materials to be distributed in foreign languages, Miller said. -- Sioux City Journal: King sues Culver over English-only law

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The Birmingham News writes about my friend Jerome Gray's retirement: When they were students at Conecuh County Training School, neither Joe Reed nor Jerome Gray foresaw a future in which they would team up to break barriers to black participation in Alabama politics.

But when they saw a chance for that future, they seized it with a vengeance. The evidence is in the numbers: Alabama has 870 black elected officials at all levels of government, more than in every state except neighboring Mississippi. The numbers of blacks in Alabama's state and local governing bodies generally mirror the percentage of blacks in the state and local populations.

"We have achieved ... parity or equity in virtually every chamber of government," Gray said recently.

A lot of people - lawyers and grass-roots activists among them - had a hand in achieving that result. But two of the primary players were Reed, as chairman of the black Alabama Democratic Conference, and Gray, as ADC field director. Now Gray, at 68, has decided that, after 27 years, his playing days are over. People who worked with him and against him are saying they may not see his like again. -- Voting rights powerhouse Gray lays aside `quiet work'

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The Justice Department today objected (under the Voting Rights Act) to 2 decisions of the Alabama Supreme Court. What follows is probably more than you want to know about the background:

Since 1985, the state law applicable to filling vacancies on the Mobile County Commission has swung between gubernatorial appointment and special election.

In 1985, the Alabama Legislature adopted Act 85-237, a local act providing for the election of county commissioners whenever vacancies occurred on the Mobile County Commission. The Alabama Attorney General submitted Act 85-237 for preclearance on 15 April 1985. The U.S. Attorney General issued a “no objection” letter regarding Act 85-237 on 17 June 1985. At this point, Alabama law authorized a special election, and that was the only way to fill a vacancy consistent with the Voting Rights Act.

In the Spring of 1987, a vacancy occurred in the District 1 Commissioner position on the Mobile County Commission. Act 85-237 required a special election if more than one year remained in the term. Since there was more than one year remaining in the term, the election officials of Mobile County called a special election.

Sam Jones and another candidate qualified for the Democratic nomination, and Jones was nominated by the Democratic Party in a special primary. Jones also won the special general election over opposition.

Shortly after the vacancy occurred, a Mobile County voter filed suit to have Act 85-237 declared unconstitutional. The Circuit Court ruled in favor of the constitutionality of the law. On appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court, the Court held that the subject matter of Act 85-237 was subsumed by general law (Ala. Code § 11-3-6) and was therefore invalid under Ala. Const. Art. IV § 105. Stokes v. Noonan, 534 So.2d 237 (Ala. 1988).

Under Hathorn v. Lovorn, 457 U.S. 255 (1982), the State of Alabama or Mobile County should have submitted the Stokes v. Noonan decision for preclearance. Until such preclearance was obtained, neither Mobile County nor the State could legally enforce or administer the change made by Stokes v. Noonan. The State has stipulated that no such submission has occurred (prior to this one).

Gov. Guy Hunt gave Sam Jones a commission of appointment after the Stokes decision. Because the State never obtained preclearance for the Stokes decision before Gov. Hunt administered it by appointing Jones, Gov. Hunt’s action was unnecessary and illegal because Jones’s elected term on the Mobile County Commission had not been terminated.

In 2004, the Legislature adopted Act 2004-455 which amended Ala. Code § 11-3-6 to allow local laws providing methods other than gubernatorial appointment for filling vacancies. The Alabama Attorney General submitted Act 2004-455 for preclearance on 9 August 2004. The Attorney General of the U.S. issued a “no objection” letter regarding Act 2004-455 on 28 September 2004.

The submission of Act 2004-455 mentioned Stokes v. Noonan, but did not state explicitly whether the new Act would have any effect on the previously-precleared Act 85-237.

When Mobile County Commissioner Sam Jones was elected Mayor of the City of Mobile and made plans to resign from his position on the Commission, Reps. Kennedy, Buskey, and Clark filed suit in Montgomery County Circuit Court for relief including a declaration that the vacancy should be filled by special election. The plaintiffs took the position that Act 2004-455 had revived Act 85-237. Eventually, the Alabama Supreme Court decided that Act 2004-455 had a prospective effect only; that is, only local acts passed after the effective date of Act 2004-455 could take advantage of the proviso enacted by that Act.

The benchmark against which to judge the Riley v. Kennedy decision is the situation “in force and effect” immediately before it was decided. Abrams v. Johnson, 521 U.S. 74, 97 (1997); Section 5 Guidelines, 28 C.F.R. § 51.54(b)(1). The benchmark situation was the special-election requirement of Act 85-237 which had been precleared and administered in 1985-87 and reaffirmed by Act 2004-455 (which in turn had been precleared in 2004 and administered in other counties in 2004).

In summary, each time the Legislature has acted to provide for special elections to fill vacancies, the Alabama Attorney General has submitted the act and obtained preclearance. In contrast, the Alabama Attorney General has now belatedly submitted the Alabama Supreme Court decisions for preclearance – only after being ordered to do so by the District Court.

Disclosure: I am one of the attorneys for Reps. Kennedy, Buskey, and Clark.

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The Yakima Herald-Republic reports: A newly released study says the election system in this mostly Hispanic town unfairly keeps Hispanics off the City Council.

And, while Sunnyside's city manager called the research flawed and "bogus," one of the nation's top voting-rights advocates thinks the report is on to something.

The research, part of a Whitman College report titled "The State of the State for Washington Latinos: 2006," concludes that the city's at-large elections violate the federal Voting Rights Act by establishing barriers to political representation of Hispanics.

In other words, the research states that allowing every Sunnyside voter to vote for all seven council seats produces different results than if the city were divided into voting districts. -- Yakima Herald Republic Online - Home Page - Yakima, Washington News, Classifieds, Information, Advertising

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AP reports: The U.S. Department of Justice is intervening in a federal lawsuit in which five American Indians are challenging Fremont County's system of holding at-large elections.

The department filed notice Thursday that it is intervening in the case for the limited purpose of defending the constitutionality of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Five members of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, sued Fremont County last year. They claim the county's system of holding at-large elections violates Voting Rights Act by impermissibly diluting the American Indian vote.

The Mountain States Legal Foundation, based in Lakewood, Colo., is defending Fremont County. In its answer to the lawsuit filed late last year, the foundation argued that it would be unconstitutional to hold Fremont County to the section of the Voting Rights Act which prohibits practices that dilute minority voting. -- Feds intervene in Indian voting case

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AP reports: Democrat Ciro Rodriguez's victory over seven-term Republican incumbent Henry Bonilla was another blow to Republicans who lost control of Congress five weeks ago. ...

Bonilla blamed the Supreme Court ruling that declared the district's former boundaries unconstitutional and forced a redrawing of the district that added more Hispanic Democratic voters. ...

Bonilla, the only Mexican-American Republican in Congress, nearly avoided the runoff when he came just shy of the 50 percent mark in a Nov. 7 free-for-all special election that included eight candidates. Rodriguez, in second place, advanced to the runoff with Bonilla. ...

The Supreme Court ruled in June that a 2003 reconfiguration of the 23rd District was unconstitutional because it diluted minority votes by splitting Laredo, a city that is almost all Hispanic, into two districts.

A three-judge panel redrew the district in August to restore 100,000 Hispanics to the 23rd District that had been shunted elsewhere. The new district, which stretches from San Antonio south to the Mexican border and almost to El Paso in the west, gave Rodriguez yet another chance at national office and made Bonilla fight a little harder to keep his seat.

The new 23rd district has a voting age population that is 61 percent Hispanic, versus a 51 percent Hispanic voting age population before. -- (5:03 a.m.)" href="http://www.elpasotimes.com/breakingnews/ci_4831001">El Paso Times - Rodriguez wins District 23 runoff (5:03 a.m.)

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The Rapid City Journal reported last Thursday: A federal judge has ordered the city of Martin to redraw the boundaries of its city-council districts because the existing districts violate the voting rights of American Indians.

In a decision issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier of Rapid City said Martin must submit a proposal for redrawing the council-district boundaries by Jan. 5. The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the city on behalf of two Indian voters, will have until Jan. 25 to file its response to the city's plan.

The judge will then make the determination of whether the city's plan is a legally acceptable remedy.

Martin is in Bennett County, which is adjacent to Rosebud Sioux and Pine Ridge Indian reservations in southern South Dakota.

The judge said evidence shows that about 36 percent of the city's voting-age population is Indian, and those Indian voters are spread evenly among the existing three council wards. However, candidates preferred by Indians rarely win city council elections in Martin, Schreier said. -- The Rapid City Journal

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AP reports: The Department of Justice is allowing Texas to go forward with the Dec. 12 date for a congressional runoff after federal judges ruled early voting could be extended because the election falls on an important religious day for Catholic Hispanics.

The decision to hold the runoff Tuesday has angered some Hispanic groups who have said it is an attempt to suppress the Latino vote to boost election chances for Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla.

Bonilla faces Democrat Ciro Rodriguez, a former congressman, in the runoff because no candidate got more than 50 percent of the vote in the Nov. 7 election.

Dec. 12 is the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the day many Hispanics mark the appearance of the Virgin Mary before Indian peasant Juan Diego in Mexico in 1531. Many Hispanics attend Mass, hold processions and gather with family and friends. -- Dallas Cars & Trucks | DallasNews.com | Dallas Morning News | Texas/Southwest

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The Los Angeles Times reports: A California appeals court Wednesday unanimously upheld a state law to make it easier to challenge at-large election systems that have diluted the potential power of minority voters.

Under the 5-year-old California Voting Rights Act, when a group of voters can demonstrate that their area is characterized by "racially polarized" voting patterns, they can demand that a jurisdiction convert from an at-large to a district electoral system.

The decision by a court in Fresno was the first appellate ruling on the 2001 law. It arose out of a case filed in Modesto two years ago. A group of frustrated Latino voters led by Enrique Sanchez attempted to establish that the city's at-large system had adulterated their voting power.

Although Modesto is 25.6% Latino, only one Latino has been elected to the five-member City Council since 1911, the plaintiffs said. -- Court upholds racial challenges to at-large elections - Los Angeles Times

Note: Rick Hasen has a link to the opinion.

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The Orlando Sentinel reports: A 17-month-long battle over how Osceola elects county commissioners could come to a close in federal court today.

The remaining issue before U.S. District Judge Gregory A. Presnell is whether the county's proposal to create a system of at-large and single-member seats by increasing the size of the board to seven commissioners will pass legal muster.

Presnell issued an injunction halting commission elections in June and ruled in October that the "racially polarized" county's at-large voting system penalizes Hispanics in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

On Wednesday, commissioners voted 4-0 to accept a redistricting plan drafted by the U.S. Department of Justice, rather than a plan drawn up by county experts, after Presnell this week rejected a key part of the county's proposal. Commissioner Paul Owen was absent. -- Federal judge will decide merits of Osceola vote plan - Orlando Sentinel : Osceola County News Federal judge will decide merits of Osceola vote plan - Orlando Sentinel : Osceola County News

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AP reports: Texas is asking the Justice Department to approve Dec. 12 for a congressional runoff election, a date that a Latino group opposes in part because it is an important religious day for many Hispanics.

Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla and former U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-San Antonio, are in a runoff for the 23rd Congressional District, which was redrawn after the U.S. Supreme Court found that the old district map discriminated against Latino voters.

Dec. 12 is the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico and Latin America. The League of United Latin American Citizens has said the election should be set for Dec. 19. The group contends that the earlier date discriminates against Hispanics to help Bonilla, whose support among Latinos has been eroding. ...

Texas filed the request Tuesday. The state had said it did not need approval because a court had ordered it to set the runoff for the earliest time possible.

Scott Haywood, spokesman for the Texas secretary of state, said Texas has asked for an expedited decision. He said he did not think his office knew the date was the holy day. He said setting the date a week later would push the election into Hanukkah, which begins at sundown Dec. 15, and Christmas. -- State seeks federal OK for Bonilla-Rodriguez election date

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AP reports: A federal court refused Friday to appoint observers for Tuesday's election to remedy what the Justice Department called the city's abysmal record of meeting its obligations to Spanish-speaking voters.

The three-judge panel filed a brief order Friday afternoon denying the request and said the reasoning would be explained in a decision later.

The Justice Department contends Philadelphia has failed to provide sufficient election materials in Spanish and has not recruited enough bilingual poll workers. City officials said they have hired more interpreters and argue that bringing in observers could discourage people from voting. -- Judges reject Philly election monitors - Yahoo! News

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CNN reports: The Justice Department plans to dispatch more than 800 federal observers and monitors to 20 states to protect voting rights in potentially troubled polling locations, officials announced Tuesday.

That is a record number of federal officials watching polling stations in an off-year election.

"Yes, the anticipated closeness of races is one factor in our decisions about where we'll be sending people," said Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Wan Kim.

Kim said he would not identify until Monday the more than 65 cities and counties to which the observers will be sent. -- Federal observers and monitors heading to polls - CNN.com

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The Philadelphia Inquirer reports: Two weeks before Election Day, the city is fighting an attempt by the U.S. Justice Department to appoint federal observers for Philadelphia elections beginning Nov. 7 and lasting past next year's presidential race, until the end of 2009.

The effort to appoint the observers stems from a lawsuit filed by the federal government 14 days ago alleging that the city has violated the rights of its Hispanic voters.

Specifically, it charges that the city hasn't adequately recruited and trained bilingual poll workers, failed to provide sufficient election-related materials in Spanish, and prohibited Hispanic voters with limited English from choosing someone to help them inside the voting booth, which law permits. ...

With the election fast approaching, the city has been struggling to implement new federal rules on handicapped access, as well as a new state law requiring dozens of city polling places to be moved (they can no longer be inside bars or elected officials' homes, for instance). -- Philadelphia Inquirer | 10/27/2006 | Phila. opposes U.S. observers at polls

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A press release from LDF says: Today [18 October], the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) filed a motion to intervene on behalf of African-American voters in a lawsuit brought by the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One, a utility district located in Austin, Texas. LDF's motion was brought on behalf of voters who reside in the district and whose voting rights are directly impacted by the lawsuit.

Note: The district court's Pacer system does not have the intervention papers posted yet. As soon as I get a copy of these papers, I will post them.

Update: Here are the intervention papers for Rodney and Nicole Louis.

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MALDEF, representing David and Lisa Diaz, has moved to intervene in the suit by Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District regarding the Voting Rights Act. A copy of the motion and memo are here.

Thanks to Nina Perales for sending these to me.

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The Campaign Legal Center has posted the answer of the Justice Department in the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One's suit seeking, among other things, a declaration that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional.

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AP reports: The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday sued the city of Philadelphia, claiming it violated the rights of Spanish-speaking voters.

The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said the city failed to provide language assistance at the polls to most Spanish-speaking voters in recent elections, the department said.

Federal authorities also said the city prevented Spanish-speaking voters from receiving assistance from people of their choice, even in cases where bilingual assistance was otherwise unavailable. -- Feds sue Philadelphia over voting rights - Yahoo! News

Note: I could not find the complaint on either the DOJ website or the District Court site. If anyone has a link to it, please email it to me.

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The federal court in the Middle District of Alabama has ordered Chilton County to develop a new election plan to be used in the 2008 election. The order stems from a suit brought by two white voters to dismantle the cumulative voting plan used in the county since 1988. The CV plan was agreed by the plaintiffs and defendants and put into effect by a consent decree.

The court's opinon and
order may be downloaded here.

Note: James Blacksher and I represent the plaintiffs in this action. We have already appealed the decision setting aside the 1988 injuntion.

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The Los Angeles Times reports: Recall petitions need to be printed only in English, even when some voters are not proficient in the language, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The federal Voting Rights Act requires ballots and other government-produced election material to be published in other languages if more than 5% of the voters speak a different language.

But in a case involving the Santa Ana Unified School District, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the requirement did not apply to recall petitions written and circulated by citizens.

The court reversed a decision last year by a 9th Circuit panel that said petitions to recall Santa Ana school board Trustee Nativo V. Lopez in 2003 should have been printed in Spanish as well as English. Lopez was recalled by a large margin. -- Ruling Against Santa Ana's English-Only Recall Petitions Is Reversed - Los Angeles Times

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The Springfield Republican reports: Averting a legal showdown between the city and the federal government, Mayor Charles V. Ryan has agreed to speed up voting reforms to help more Spanish-speaking residents register and vote in city elections.

Under an agreement reached yesterday with the U.S. Justice Department, the city will hire 57 bilingual poll workers, appoint an Hispanic voting coordinator, allow federal election monitors and make translators and other services available beginning with the Sept. 19 primary elections.

For the November election, the city must hire 95 bilingual poll workers, compared with 37 that staffed last year's municipal election. Overall, the city employs 384 poll workers on election day, spread out over 64 precincts.

The agreement comes four weeks after the Justice Department filed suit against the city, accusing it of discriminating against Spanish-speaking voters by failing to provide enough assistance at the polls. City officials acknowledged that local efforts fell short of requirements set by the Voting Rights Act, but said there had been considerable progress in recent months. -- Voting rights suit settled

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The Springfield Republican reports: A federal judge has given the city until tomorrow to reach a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department before issuing a temporary restraining order in a voting rights lawsuit.

U.S. Judge Michael A. Ponsor set a deadline of noon tomorrow for both sides to hammer out a deal for removing obstacles for Hispanics to participate in the Sept. 19 election.

To assist Hispanic voters, the federal government is pressuring the city to hire additional bilingual poll workers and to accept federal election monitors during citywide elections. The demands are the centerpiece of a lawsuit filed on Aug. 2, accusing the city of a long-standing violations of the federal Voting Rights Act.

The injunction, requested by federal prosecutors last week, does not directly ask Ponsor to block next month's primary election. But it is unclear if city officials could comply with all its requirements - including hiring 58 more bilingual poll workers - by the Sept. 19 voting date. -- Hispanic voters must be assisted, judge says

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AP reports: Chilton County's lone black commissioner, Bobby Agee, figures his tenure on the County Commission is over if the central Alabama county, which is nearly 90 percent white, ends a cumulative voting system that was approved in 1988.

So does an attorney representing black voters in the county, which had an all-white commission prior to the change.

"Because of racially polarized voting, only blacks stand to lose if the voting system is changed," attorney Jim Blacksher said Monday.

U.S District Judge Myron Thompson, who approved the 1988 plan, ruled earlier this month that the cumulative voting for seven county commissioners in Chilton County must end and the county must return to four commission districts elected under one person, one vote. -- Chilton County's lone black commissioner worried about vote order | TimesDaily.com | Times Daily | Florence, AL

Disclosure: James Blacksher and I represent the black plaintiffs in this case.

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Glenn C. Altschuler writes in the Baltimore Sun: The civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s confronted embedded beliefs and behavior, and transformed the social, political and legal landscape in the American South. Virtually no one, black or white, remained untouched by it. In There Goes My Everything, Jason Sokol, a doctoral student at the University of California at Berkeley, examines the response of ordinary white Southerners to the "new realities" - in public schools, municipal pools, motels, restaurants and voting booths.

Well-researched and judicious, There Goes My Everything reminds us that before the civil rights movement exposed "old truths" as myths, segregation had "the feel of something natural" and immutable for many whites. Convinced that they understood their blacks, white Southerners interpreted deference as a sign of friendship, silence as satisfaction. By the '50s many of them acknowledged that segregation was a social construction. Nonetheless, Sokol argues, stereotypes of potbellied, tobacco-chewing, Confederate-flag-waving "good old boys" have hidden the wide range of responses to the assault on racism. To be sure, there were dead-enders aplenty, like Lester Maddox, proprietor of Pickrick, a popular fried chicken restaurant, who lambasted "outside agitators," organized Georgians Unwilling to Surrender (GUTS) and brandished an axe handle to keep blacks out of his establishment. But many others waffled, embraced some aspects of the new social order or "walked gingerly across its threshold." -- How Southern whites woke up to the new reality of civil rights - baltimoresun.com

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AP reports: The federal government says Springfield is violating the voting rights of Spanish-speaking residents, and is trying to get the city to stop holding any more elections until they abide by the law.

The U-S Department of Justice filed a motion in federal court today asking a judge to issue a temporary restraining order that would stop any more city elections until Springfield complies with the Voting Rights Act. -- Eyewitness News - DOJ files motion to halt election in Springfield

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Update:
The Mobile Press Register reports: A panel of three federal judges ruled Friday that Gov. Bob Riley should have sought federal approval before appointing Juan Chastang to the Mobile County Commission.

The judges ordered Riley to get clearance from the U.S. Department of Justice that the Chastang appointment complied with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The governor has 90 days to ask the Justice Department for its approval.

If the Justice Department finds that the appointment violated voters' rights, Chastang's nomination could be voided, and a special election could be held to fill the seat. -- Judges say Justice must OK Chastang

Original post:
A 3-judge court in the Middle District of Alabama has ruled that the State of Alabama violated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act by enforcing two state Supreme Court decisions without obtaining preclearance for them.

Disclosure: Cecil Gardner and Vance McCrary (of the Gardner, Middlebrooks, Gibbons & Kittrell firm in Mobile, AL) and I represented the plaintiffs in that action.

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The Springfield Republican reports: Springfield Mayor Charles V. Ryan yesterday denounced as rash a voting rights lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against the city.

The Justice Department announced on Wednesday that it had filed a suit stating that the city violated the Voting Rights Act regarding Spanish-speaking voters.

Ryan said yesterday that neither he nor anyone in City Hall had ever received complaints about voting rights issues. Furthermore, he said, the Justice Department gave officials who had not seen the complaint virtually 48 hours to sign a consent decree in which the city would have been placed under federal oversight or face a lawsuit. ...

The federal complaint states that poll workers were hostile to Hispanic and Spanish-speaking voters and denied them the right to be assisted by the person of their choice. -- Mayor objects to U.S. lawsuit

The text of the DOJ complaint is available here.

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AP reports: The City of Springfield violated the voting rights of Spanish-speaking residents by failing to provide the proper assistance at the polls, according to a federal lawsuit filed yesterday by the US Justice Department.

Registered voters with little or no knowledge of English also faced ``hostile treatment" at the polls and in some cases left without casting a ballot because of that treatment and lack of assistance, the department said.

The city failed to allow Spanish-speaking voters to receive assistance at the polls from a friend, a relative, or another person of their own choice, as is required by the law, even when there was no other bilingual assistance available, the Justice Department said. -- US sues Springfield over voting rights - The Boston Globe

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Peter Overby reports on NPR: When the Voting Rights Act extension ran into resistance from some southern senators earlier this month, supporters turned to a surprising constituency for support: big business. Officials from big companies like Wal-Mart and Walt Disney lined up in support of the bill. They say it benefits their employees and customers. -- NPR : Voting Rights Bill Finds Friends in Big Business

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An email from the American Constitution Society: Earlier today, ACS distributed two sets of materials of likely interest to your readers and the civil rights community.

First, we posted streaming video of a recent panel discussing recent changes in federal civil rights enforcement at the 2006 ACS National Convention. The issue has been in the news cycle since Charlie Savage’s Justice Department expose in The Boston Globe this Sunday. Panelists included the following:

* Roger Clegg, President and General Counsel, Center for Equal Opportunity

* Stuart Ishimaru, Commissioner, U.S. EEOC

* Brian Landsberg, Pacific McGeorge School of Law

* Bill Lann Lee, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP; former U.S. Assistant Attorney General

* Bill Taylor, Chair, Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights

* Judith A. Winston, Winston, Withers & Associates, LLC

Second, we released an ACS Issue Brief by David Cobb, Patrick Barrett and Caleb Kleppner proposing ranked-choice voting as an alternative to plurality systems. “Preserving and Expanding the Right to Vote: Ranked-choice Voting” suggests that that ranked-choice voting presents a unique opportunity to improve our democratic structure by diminishing negative campaigning, improving voter choice, promoting greater discussion of the issues, eliminating the need for costly runoff elections and, ultimately, increasing the political power of all voters.

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The Washington Post reports: The Senate voted 98 to 0 to renew key provisions of the Voting Rights Act yesterday, permitting the federal government to continue its broad oversight of state voting procedures for the next quarter-century, and allowing Republicans to claim equality with Democrats in protecting minorities' clout at the ballot box.

The act requires several states, mostly in the South, to obtain Justice Department approval before changing precinct boundaries, polling places, legislative districts, ballot formats and other voting procedures. It also requires many jurisdictions throughout the nation to provide bilingual ballots or interpreters for voters whose English is not strong.

Those two provisions caused a mini-revolt among House Republicans last week. GOP leaders had to scramble -- and rely on heavy Democratic support -- to defeat proposed amendments that they said would dilute the bill and prove politically embarrassing.

The law, first passed in 1965, retains near-iconic status in civil rights circles, even though some elected officials say it is no longer needed. GOP leaders were eager to renew it before the November elections. Unlike the House, where some Southern Republicans opposed provisions that focus on their states, the Senate passed the bill unanimously after hours of one-sided debate in which member after member praised leaders of the 1960s desegregation movement. -- Voting Rights Act Extension Passes In Senate, 98 to 0

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The Birmingham News reports: Alabama's top Republicans unanimously passed a resolution Saturday urging GOP congressmen to support amendments to the 1965 Voting Rights Act that would end special restrictions on Southern states and would require some cities to print ballots in multiple languages.

The vote took place at the Wynfrey Hotel during the annual summer meeting of the 350-member Alabama Republican Party Executive Committee. ...

aturday's resolution was passed by a voice vote without debate.

Tim Howe, the state GOP's executive director, said he did not think the resolution ran counter to his party's attempts to court minority voters. The party did not want to neuter the act, he said, but to make sure it was applied across the board. ...

Howe, as well as several members of the executive committee, said they did not care whether the special requirements for Southern states were eliminated or extended to the rest of the country. The South has made great strides in voters rights, they said, and many of the country's worst voting irregularities have recently occurred in the North, they said. -- Voting Rights Act riles Alabama GOP

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CQ Politics reports: The legal proceedings to amend one of the 32 House districts in Texas, as ordered by the Supreme Court in a June 28 ruling, moved forward on Friday -- the deadline for the parties in the case to submit proposals for revised district maps to a three-judge federal panel in Austin.

The future of the state's 23rd District, represented by seven-term Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla, is the one remaining issue from a long-running legal dispute over an unusual and highly partisan mid-decade redistricting plan implemented by the Republican majority in the Texas legislature prior to the 2004 elections. The map overhaul, spearheaded by then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, replaced one more favorable to Democrats that had been invoked by a state court panel prior to the 2002 elections. ...

A redrawing of the 23rd District necessarily requires the reconfiguration of a few other districts. The major map proposals submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas would also make alterations to the 21st District, a Republican-leaning district near Austin and San Antonio that is represented by 10-term Republican Rep. Lamar Smith; the 25th District, a heavily Hispanic and elongated district from Austin to the Mexico border that is represented by six-term Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett; and the 28th District, a south Texas district that is represented by freshman Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar.

Friday’s deadline was set under an expedited schedule issued by the federal court June 29, one day after the Supreme Court ruling. The parties now have until July 21 to file comments on the proposed maps, and the court will hear oral arguments in Austin on Aug. 3. -- CQPolitics.com - TX: Remap Plans Vary Widely; New Primaries a Possibility

[The article has details of the various proposals.]

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AP reports: The House voted Thursday to renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act, rejecting efforts by Southern conservatives to relax federal oversight of their states in a debate haunted by the ghosts of the civil rights movement.

The 390-33 vote sent to the Senate a bill that represented a Republican appeal to minority voters who doubt the GOP's "big-tent" image. Southern conservatives had complained that the act punishes their states for racist voting histories they say they've overcome. ...

The House overwhelmingly rejected amendments that would have shortened the renewal from 25 years to a decade and would have struck its requirement that ballots in some states be printed in several languages.

Supporters of the law as written called the amendments "poison pills" designed to kill the renewal because if any were adopted by the full House, the underlying renewal might have failed. -- House passes 1965 Voting Rights Act renewal

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The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy has posted the video of the “Revitalizing Democracy” panel at its recent National Convention. On June 17, ACS hosted a panel at its 2006 National Convention exploring the sources of the growing sense of disenfranchisement among Americans and avenues for reform that could make our democratic system more responsive to ordinary Americans. Panelists explored issues such as the impact of money in politics and campaign finance reform, the effect of redistricting on political polarization, the merits of the electoral college, how technology will affect political campaigning in the coming years and the implementation of the Help American Vote Act. Panelists also discussed ways that we can encourage a national conversation on these issues and broaden participation in our democracy. Included on the panel were:

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AP reports: This Cleveland suburb's mayor bristled Tuesday at a Justice Department lawsuit over the city's election system, calling the attempt to block elections premature and unwarranted.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, alleges that majority whites voting as a bloc in an at-large election setup have made it impossible for a black candidate to get elected. It's the third time the Bush administration has filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of black voters, Justice Department spokesman Eric Holland said.

"Euclid has been proactive in fostering racial harmony and full participation of all residents through programs sponsored by city government, nonprofit organizations and the many churches and congregations throughout our community," Mayor Bill Cervenik said in a news release Tuesday.

The Lake Erie city of roughly 53,000 is 30 percent black, but no black person has been elected to a local seat. There have been eight recent black city council candidates, but the council's four wards and four at-large seats dilute black voters' power, the Justice Department lawsuit alleges. -- AP Wire | 07/11/2006 | Mayor rejects claims in Justice Department's voting-rights suit

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If you compare the figures shown in the Census Bureau spreadsheets in the post below and the figures from the Alabama Secretary of State, you will notice that the Census has 9 to 17% more people who say they voted than did vote for president in Alabama. I think it is highly unlikely that many people went to the polls to vote in 2000 and 2004 and found the race for president so uninteresting that they did not bother to vote, but did vote on a constitutional amendment, a county commission, a judge, or a member of the Public Service Commission. Don't you?

The problem is caused by the methodology of the Census. It asks people if they voted; no double check of actual election results is done. Social scientists know that many people misrepresent whether they voted when asked in surveys. They give the answer expected.

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Before the House leadership suddenly stopped the consideration of the Voting Rights Act renewal yesterday, the Rules Committee had adopted a rule allowing only two amendments. The substance of the two amendments can be found here.

The Norwood amendment contains an "updated formula [which] would be a rolling test based off of the last three presidential elections. Any state would be subject to Section 5 if it currently has a discriminatory test in place or voter turnout of less than 50% in any of the three most recent presidential elections." The text of the amendment makes clear that this is 50% of the citizen voting age population (CVAP).

Let's check on which states would be covered under that half of the formula. The Census Bureau publishes information after each federal election on the CVAP turnout. The three most recent are 2004, 2000, and 1996. (For the first two, look for Table 4C). This means the States that would be covered would be Georgia (1996) and Hawaii (1996, 2000). If someone can point me to a source of sub-state data, I can see if any subdivisions of states would be covered.

After a bit more research, I may be able to give you a report on the "discriminatory test" half of the proposed trigger.

Update: Thanks to Dan Levitas for correcting my misreading of the Georgia data.

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AP reports: House Republican leaders on Wednesday postponed a vote on renewing the 1965 Voting Rights Act after GOP lawmakers complained it unfairly singles out nine Southern states for federal oversight.

"We have time to address their concerns," Republican leaders said in a joint statement. "Therefore, the House Republican Leadership will offer members the time needed to evaluate the legislation."

It was unclear whether the legislation would come up this year. The temporary provisions don't expire until 2007, but leaders of both parties had hoped to pass the act and use it to further their prospects in the fall's midterm elections.

The statement said the GOP leaders are committed to renewing the law "as soon as possible." ...

"The speaker's had a standing rule that nothing would be voted on unless there's a majority of the majority," said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., who led the objections. "It was pretty clear at the meeting that the majority of the majority wasn't there." -- Chron.com | House Delays Renewal of Voting Rights Act

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The House will take up the Voting Rights Act renewal today with two amendments detailed in this Rules Committee report.

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Rick Hasen writes on his Election Law blog: I have been advocating a proactive bailout amendment for VRA renewal that I think can increase the chances that a renewed VRA passes constitutional muster without weakening the important protections of section 5. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland will be offering this amendment on proactive bailout today to the House Rules Committee. That committee will determine if the amendment gets offered on the floor of the House during the vote on VRA renewal on Thursday. His office also has issued this explanation of the proposed amendment. -- Election Law: Hasen: Proactive Bailout Amendment to Be Offered in House Rules Committee

I commented to Rick: The problem with "proactive" bailout provisions such as Westmoreland proposes is the lack of understanding about who has the most opportunity, ability, and incentive to gather evidence proving the matters called for by the bailout provision.

Take a look at the bailout requirement found in Section 4(a) of the VRA. Four requirements (A-C and E) are matters that can be found in the AG's files. Paragraph D requires the jurisdiction to show that it has not made any change that has not been submitted. How is the AG going to know that unless the Voting Section conducts an audit of every law, every regulation, every administrative bulletin implemented since 1964, 1968, or 1972? Paragraph F requires proof of the jurisdiction's affirmative steps beyond the prohibitions of Section 5 "changes" to have made things better for minorities. Again, how will the DOJ know this without doing a fact-intensive investigation "on the ground"?

I have been involved with some preclearance requests on behalf of jurisdictions. I know it is tough just trying to get some small places to find all the election procedures they changed so we can tell the DOJ that previous practices have all been precleared.

Rick responded: I think your argument proves my point. A proactive bailout proposal shifts the incentive to the DOJ (or rather, mandates the DOJ) to work in gathering this information. I want the DOJ to conduct those audits, with the cooperation of the local jurisdiction. If a local jurisdiction does not want to cooperate with a fact intensive investigation that DOJ conducts, then the jurisdiction will remain covered.

Now perhaps the argument is that DOJ doesn't have the resources to do this. If that's right, then give DOJ more resources in the VRA bill. And if the argument is that it would take longer than a year to go through all the jurisdictions, then the amendment could be reworked to require DOJ to begin with those jurisdictions that appear most likely to be able to bailout, and to complete a review within three years of the Act of all jurisdictions.

Gerry Hebert (a/k/a Mr. Bailout) commented on the Campaign Legal Center Blog: I doubt seriously that the Attorney General has the staff or resources to