House reapproves Voting Rights Act

WASHINGTON — The House Thursday easily approved an extension of key provisions of the landmark Voting Rights Act, after GOP leaders quelled a rebellion within the party's Southern ranks that threatened to become a political embarrassment.

Before the 390-33 vote to extend the measure for a quarter-century, the House defeated four amendments that would have diluted two expiring provisions and possibly derailed final passage before the November congressional elections. With the House hurdle now cleared, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he hoped to bring the extension to the Senate floor before the August recess.

The act's temporary provisions do not expire until next year, but Republican leaders had hoped that early action would earn goodwill from minority voters, as members of Congress head into a brutally competitive fall campaign season.

The Voting Rights Act is a cornerstone of the civil-rights era and was adopted in 1965 to stop the systematic disenfranchisement of black voters, particularly in the South, through barriers such as poll taxes and literacy tests. Much of the legislation, including a section that bans racial discrimination at the ballot, is permanent law.

But several key provisions are temporary. One requires certain states and jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination to gain federal approval for voting-law changes. Another imposes a language requirement on jurisdictions with a high percentage of voters whose native language is not English.

It is those two provisions that drew the ire of some Republican lawmakers, mainly from the South. Some of these Republicans had objected to approving the provisions and, in recent weeks, had blocked the bill. To move it forward, GOP leaders allowed the four amendments to be considered.

Two of the amendments addressed the required approval of changes in states' voting laws. "It's true that when the Voting Rights Act was first passed in 1965, Georgia needed federal intervention to correct decades of discrimination," said freshman Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga.

He noted that voter registration and turnout is higher today among black voters than among white voters. One-third of officials elected statewide in Georgia are black, including the attorney general and the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, and black representation in the state legislature is in proportion to Georgia's black population.

"Georgia's record on voter equality can stand up against any other state in the union," he said.

Republicans also sought to strip the act of a provision that bilingual ballots be provided to minority voters in certain jurisdictions.