Blacks right to vote expires in 2007

Link

The right to vote for Blacks was legally a presidential act. It was renewed in 1982 for a 25 year period.

Now, to get to the conspiracy that may be involved...

If Arabs were considered "black", could our government not sign an extension in the interest of national security?

Um, most Arabs I know consider themselves brown, not black.
Think Uganda when General Idi Amin Dada (1971-1973) when he proclaimed Africa to be for blacks, and gave those with 'brown skin' mere weeks to leave or die.

just my two cents

I think the ACLU will be all over this to get it fixed ofr before the expired date
yet I also think the gov would/should fix it before the have an out ragged country.

I for one would hate to see if it was ignored/forgotten then on the election day of 2008 many, votes not counted just because the pigmint of someones skin.

I honestly don't see why they made it only so many years in the first place then again the same thing.

::shakes finger at gov:: "Bad Gov! Bad Gov!" ::shakes finger again::

I think you should read this.

urbanlegends.about.com...

www.snopes.com...

Grady, Grady, Grady. You just nipped a conspirecy in the bud. Shame on you! Just think of all the flaming rhetoric that has just been stillborn.

I know, especially now that the Know-it-all thread has been posted. Just call me Mr. Knowitall!

[edit on 2006/3/28 by GradyPhilpott]

Everybody has the right to vote regardless. That is being demonstrated by the fallacy of African Americans being disallowed the right to vote. GradyPhilpott demonstrated this by his post. That seems fine and well. If the Voting Act of 1965 is supposed to enforce that right to vote, it should be renewed. Yet, this brings up another question.

Isn't it disturbing that the remedies to enable voting without harassment should be voted on again and again? Beside the fact that it is a Presidential Act, don't you think this is still a serious matter? After all, if it isn't passed again, who's going to prevent someone from driving you from the ballot box?





[edit on 29-3-2006 by ceci2006]

I don't know if its as (pardon the pun) quite so black and white as that.

same source
Congress determined that the existing federal anti-discrimination laws were not sufficient to overcome the resistance by state officials to enforcement of the 15th Amendment

So it seems like the issue is enformcement of the 15th ammendment that required action. The action might expire, but is there really any likelyhood that some states will start having reading tests and poll taxes and the like at the voting stations??

Also, it seems to be a law, that needs to be renewed, rather than an executive order.

[edit on 29-3-2006 by Nygdan]

Another interesting angle here is that the acts give the office of the attorney general the ability to monitor elections with federal agents, if that expires in 2007....

Nygdan, I also believe that there are "shades of grey" within the law. So, I decided to get curious and look the Fifteenth Amendment. I found a copy on findlaw.com. The entire law can be read here. However, for the purposes of the post, it is helpful to know what exactly does the law state.

The initial parts of the Amendment states these two laws:

Section. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

However, the 15th Amendment itself could not be enforced due to the grandfather clauses, poll taxes, "white primaries", literacy tests and racial gerrymandering. And since the law was passed during Grant's era, the Amendment eliminated the clause that White people could only vote. But that did not stop the harrassment that kept people of color from the voting booth.

The judicial assessment of the amendment made these interesting observations:

In its initial appraisals of this Amendment, the Supreme Court appeared disposed to emphasize only its purely negative aspects. ''The Fifteenth Amendment,'' it announced, did ''not confer the right . . . [to vote] upon any one,'' but merely ''invested the citizens of the United States with a new constitutional right which is . . . exemption from discrimination in the exercise of the elective franchise on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.'' 5 But in subsequent cases, the Court, conceding ''that this article'' has originally been construed as giving ''no affirmative right to the colored man to vote'' and as having been ''designed primarily to prevent discrimination against him,'' professed to be able ''to see that under some circumstances it may operate as the immediate source of a right to vote. In all cases where the former slave-holding States had not removed from their Constitutions the words 'white man' as a qualification for voting, this provision did, in effect, confer on him the right to vote, because . . . it annulled the discriminating word white, and this left him in the enjoyment of the same right as white persons. And such would be the effect of any future constitutional provision of a State which would give the right of voting exclusively to white people. . . .

But the main question is how to enforce this right. And this Amendment became an issue of states' rights versus federal rights. For many people of color, the legislation of the 15th Amendment was only in name. In order to vote, extreme measures were taken by some states to keep the ability to vote singularly for Whites. That is why the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed to stop the intimidation and allow voting to be experienced by everyone. The entire act can be read here

This is the part you referred to in your post:

President Johnson signed the resulting legislation into law on August 6, 1965. Section 2 of the Act, which closely followed the language of the 15th amendment, applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the literacy tests on a nationwide basis. Among its other provisions, the Act contained special enforcement provisions targeted at those areas of the country where Congress believed the potential for discrimination to be the greatest. Under Section 5, jurisdictions covered by these special provisions could not implement any change affecting voting until the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia determined that the change did not have a discriminatory purpose and would not have a discriminatory effect. In addition, the Attorney General could designate a county covered by these special provisions for the appointment of a federal examiner to review the qualifications of persons who wanted to register to vote. Further, in those counties where a federal examiner was serving, the Attorney General could request that federal observers monitor activities within the county's polling place.

Congress extended section 5 of the Voting Rights Act after hearings of continued disenfranchisement of voters in some states. But it took litigation to add subsequent passages to the act. Out of which, the 1970 and 1975 Amendments were created. The extension happened twice, according to the two additions:

The 1970 and 1975 Amendments

Congress extended Section 5 for five years in 1970 and for seven years in 1975. With these extensions Congress validated the Supreme Court's broad interpretation of the scope of Section 5. During the hearings on these extensions Congress heard extensive testimony concerning the ways in which voting electorates were manipulated through gerrymandering, annexations, adoption of at-large elections, and other structural changes to prevent newly-registered black voters from effectively using the ballot. Congress also heard extensive testimony about voting discrimination that had been suffered by Hispanic, Asian and Native American citizens, and the 1975 amendments added protections from voting discrimination for language minority citizens.

In 1973, the Supreme Court held certain legislative multi-member districts unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment on the ground that they systematically diluted the voting strength of minority citizens in Bexar County, Texas. This decision in White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755 (1973), strongly shaped litigation through the 1970s against at-large systems and gerrymandered redistricting plans. In Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980), however, the Supreme Court required that any constitutional claim of minority vote dilution must include proof of a racially discriminatory purpose, a requirement that was widely seen as making such claims far more difficult to prove.

Lastly, during the Reagan Administration, Congress decided to revisit Section Four in another twenty-five years. This was done in 1982. However, in 1985, Congress moved to do this:

Congress also adopted a new standard, which went into effect in 1985, providing how jurisdictions could terminate (or "bail out" from) coverage under the provisions of Section 4. Furthermore, after extensive hearings, Congress amended Section 2 to provide that a plaintiff could establish a violation of the Section without having to prove discriminatory purpose.

Generally to everyone else, this is how I see the entire debate surrounding the renewal of the Voting Rights act of 1965 by Congress.

So, it is not really a hoax. Everyone should be a little worried if Congress decides not to renew the bill because without it, there aren't any means to "enforce" anyone's right to vote. I too find it interesting that the Atty. General can play a role in making sure that the voting practices within the United States are equitable and fair.

However, history dictated that most of the attacks against the practice of voting violated the rights of African Americans. And knowing what happened to a segment of the population in the past, there might be a reason--with the so-called turn to the right of American politics--that this might happen again. And knowing that our POTUS supports "states rights", would you feel less secure if your voting rights are in jeopardy now that time is up?

Because if voting practices were to return back to the states, any state legislature may feel that they might not want to enforce suffrage for everyone anymore. After all, if there isn't any law, what's to stop someone from intimidating a segment of voters from participating when wanting a certain politician to win?

Does Florida or Ohio come to mind?












[edit on 29-3-2006 by ceci2006]

[edit on 30-3-2006 by ceci2006]

[edit on 30-3-2006 by RANT]