OneWorld.net (U.S.)

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jul 28 (OneWorld) - Civil rights activists are demanding that the federal government reauthorize the 1965 Voting Rights Act, saying voters' most fundamental democratic right would be routinely denied if the law is allowed to lapse.

Even as things stand, they say, violations of the right to vote persist 40 years after the legislation was passed and more than a century after the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution enfranchised black men.

They plan to carry their message to rallies scheduled for Aug. 6, the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

Donald Cravins, a Louisiana state senator since 1991, said black communities in the southern state continue to be inundated with misleading election information designed to prevent them from voting--for example, flyers providing incorrect polling dates.

''To this day, this kind of voter suppression tactic is common in black communities,'' said Cravins, who graduated from high school in 1965 and credited the law passed that year with enabling him not only to vote but also to run for office.

''Rather than just a renewal, we have to fight for an expansion and restoration of the original act,'' he added.

Cravins spoke this week at a conference on the VRA sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund and civil rights organizations representing various ethnic groups.

The VRA outlawed literacy tests and other obstacles used by segregationists to keep blacks from registering to vote. It built on the 15th Amendment by, among other things, mandating a federal review of any changes in election laws and procedures in jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination, requiring some communities to provide bilingual voting information and ballot forms, and ensuring that federal election monitors can be sent to polling places to ensure fair play.

Those key provisions are due to lapse in 2007 unless the federal government extends the legislation's life, as it last did in 1982.

Although the law's greatest impact was in the South, the Act covers the whole nation and specific sections have triggered enforcement in numerous states because of shifting population and discrimination patterns.

Last year, a federal court ruled that South Dakota discriminated against Native American voters by illegally ''packing'' their population in a single, re-drawn district to dilute their strength at the polls, said Heather Dawn Thompson, deputy director at the Appleseed Foundation, a network of non-profit public-interest law centers.

Thompson, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, said federal election monitors were especially important as the Democratic and Republican parties both deploy private monitors whose behavior suppresses voters.

''It would be a very big detriment to our community not to have someone independent out there on the ground on election day we could call on for help,'' she said.

Outsiders in suits make voters feel very uncomfortable, especially when they start taking down license plate numbers,'' Thompson said, referring to the partisan private monitors.

Language assistance also is needed since many Native American elders speak languages in which there are no words for ''Democrat'' and ''Republican,'' she added.

''Without the VRA, there is no doubt that [states] won't make the extra effort,'' she said.

Violations of the act's language assistance provision remain common even in urban areas with large immigrant populations, said Eugene Lee, an attorney at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center.

One-third of polling stations ran afoul of the law in the eight of Los Angeles County's 88 cities that have Asian-American majorities, Lee said. This, although 43 percent of the population had been classified as ''limited English proficient.''

Language assistance violations and voter suppression tactics such as those described by Cravins and Thompson plague even Hispanic Americans, the most politically prominent of America's minorities, said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

''Some may look at the recent electoral successes of the Latino community, including the election of two Latino U.S. Senators, the election of a Latino as mayor of the nation's second largest city, and the overt courting of Latino voters by the Republican and Democratic parties, and suggest that the work of the Voting Rights Act is done,'' Vargas said.

''I assure you it's not.''

More than 40 million Latinos live in the United States, according to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Earlier this month, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House of Representatives judiciary committee, said Republicans in the House would draft a 25-year reauthorization of the VRA. Hearings are expected to begin in the fall.

Meanwhile, a number of civil rights organizations are holding their own hearings across the country under the aegis of the National Commission on the VRA. They said their aim is to establish a record of ongoing discrimination by collecting evidence and presenting it to lawmakers to aid the case for reauthorization.

The exercise also is intended as a hedge against potential legal challenges to the law or specific clauses from conservative groups that have said the VRA represents federal intrusion into local elections and in any event has been rendered redundant because discrimination no longer is common.

President George W. Bush has yet to declare his position, said Karen Narasaki, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. ''This shouldn't be a partisan issue,'' she said. ''As [President Lyndon B. Johnson, who pushed the VRA through Congress] said, it's an American issue.''

Section 5 of the VRA, the provision that requires a federal okay for changes in state and local election rules, covers Alabama, Georgia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.

Section 203, which mandates language assistance for voters who are not literate or fluent in English, covers Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Washington.

States affected by both sections include Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, South Dakota, and Texas.

The two sections are currently set to expire on August 6, 2007.

Lawsuits against voting discrimination can be brought under permanent provisions of the VRA, but civil rights workers said Section 5 has been the only speedy, cost efficient, and effective mechanism. Before the VRA, litigation was costly and protracted and while it was under way the discriminatory practices at issue usually continued. Section 5, they said, provides a simple alternative in which jurisdictions simply must show that a proposed change is not discriminatory.

Civil rights workers also said that, counter to some commonly held views, bilingual elections promote integration, not cultural separatism, by bringing more citizens into the political process. Where bilingual voting is implemented well, they added, it accounts for only a small fraction of the cost of the total election.

Blacks were granted the right to vote with ratification of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1868 but efforts to register in large numbers in the South were thwarted by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups.

Local governments enacted poll taxes and literacy tests to disqualify black voters. Alabama and Mississippi drew particular national attention because of the high toll in deaths and injuries among civil rights volunteers who worked to register black voters between 1963 and 1965.

Currently, 74 percent of voting-age blacks in Alabama are listed as active voters, compared with 77 percent of voting-age whites, based on figures from the secretary of state and the Census Bureau's estimates of voting-age residents.

In March 1965, however, only 19.3 percent of eligible blacks were registered in Alabama, compared with 69.2 percent of whites.