By The River

Republicans in the U.S. House today "revolted" against a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the seminal law pushed through by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 to guarantee blacks the right to vote. House GOP leadership gave at least lip service to support for an extension, but the rank and file would have none of it and forced a postponement of a vote on the extension. Their main objections, other than the real one that the law stands in the way of efforts to hinder and impede the mainly Democratic black vote, were that the Voting Rights Act "singles out" Southern states for special scrutiny of their voting rules, and requires ballots in certain areas of the country to also be printed in Spanish or other languages.

Reality check: the Southern states singled out by the law are the same ones which enslaved blacks until the Civil War and then did everything up to and including committing murder to stop them from exercising their right to vote after the Civil War and continuing into the 1960s. The original law targeted states where less than 50 percent of all citizens were registered to vote, namely Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, and certain counties in North Carolina. The law had a dramatic effect: in Mississippi, 6.7 percent of non-whites were registered to vote in 1964. By 1969, the number had risen to 59.4 percent.

There's nothing unfair about this special scrutiny, which requires Justice Department approval in advance of any substantive change in voting rules that might put barriers to black voting. This sort of thing still goes on. Georgia, which is leading the charge against extension, recently tried to require all voters to present a photo i.d. card when voting. People who didn't have a driver's license or passport--mainly the poor, who mainly vote Democratic--could buy an official voter i.d. card for $20. No one outside of Georgia Republicans much bought the official argument that this was really about preventing voter fraud. The Bush Administration Justice Dept. turned a blind eye to this scheme, but Federal courts so far have enjoined Georgia from implementing the law, ruling it to be an unconstitutional poll tax.

Extending the Voting Rights Act for 25 years isn't a slap against the entire South. It is an attempt to rein in the racist impulses that still govern Republican politics in certain circles there, and give support to the good people in the South of both parties who want nothing to do with the hatred and ugliness of the past. It is instructive to know that the first attempt to limit the Voting Rights Act occurred during the tenure of President Richard Nixon, architect of the Republican Party's "Southern Strategy" of appealing to the racial fears of Southern whites.

The law will expire next year if it is not extended. Unfortunately, since the percentage of blacks voting Democratic is usually in the 90 percent range, Republicans have little to lose and much to gain by blocking extension. For the sake of the blood of the civil rights workers who were murdered in the 1960s South for their support of voting rights for blacks, and for the cause of basic human decency, the Voting Rights Act must be extended.