Sink, Swim, or Bailout? A Proposal for Revising the Bailout Provision of the Voting Rights Act.

In the past forty years, the use of discriminatory voting devices such as poll-taxes and literacy tests have been completely eliminated, voter registration and participation among African-Americans and other ethnic minorities have dramatically increased, and the Black Caucus has risen to a position of marked prominence in the U.S. House, all of which is attributable, at least in part, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.Yet the Constitution Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives began hearings in October 2005 on the renewal of Sections four and five of the VRA which are not scheduled to expire until 2007. Why so early? The answer comes as another question: how can the VRA be altered to meet the voting rights challenges of the twenty-first century, and pass judicial scrutiny?This paper will attempt to address this question in three parts: Part I will briefly sketch the history of the VRA, with particular attention to the debate in Congress leading up to the 1982 renewal of the Act and subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decisions which have impacted the effectiveness of Sections four and five. Part II will then analyze the solution to the problem as offered by J. Gerald Hebert, Executive Director of the Campaign Legal Center and former Section Chief of the Voting Rights Section of the Department of Justice. Part III will then discuss additional changes which the author believes would augment the effectiveness of the Mr. Hebert's proposal. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]