ey lawmakers announced a rewrite of the Voting Rights Act on Thursday, creating a test to judge which states are still so discriminatory that they need federal scrutiny of their voting decisions — moving to revive the iconic law just months after the Supreme Court declared part of it unconstitutional.
In their June decision, the justices said Congress couldn’t use discrimination from four decades ago to single out states for special federal scrutiny, so the proposal would update the test to look at recent federal court rulings that found a state or municipality violated voting laws.
“This bill modernizes the Voting Rights Act and will restore those protections that were gutted by the court,” said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who oversaw the last bipartisan approval of the law in 2006.
The bill is likely to ignite a fierce political debate over racial progress and lingering structural barriers that remain decades after the civil rights era, but Mr. Sensenbrenner and his co-sponsors said they wrote this version specifically to garner support from both sides of the aisle.
They said they want Congress to pass the revisions in time for November’s congressional elections.
Where the old standards singled out some states, the current bill makes clear that any state or municipality could be subject to stiffer scrutiny if it is found to have a recent history of voting problems.
Four states — Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia — would be covered immediately, as would Charleston County, S.C., and Northampton County, Va., congressional aides said.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/16/rep-sensenbrenner-pushes-bill-to-update-voting-rig/What the **** is wrong with this guy?
