Don Zimmerman
Vice-President,
Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 Austin, TX 2009 E-mail Interview, January 18, 2013 |
1) Do you think that the times have changed and the Voting Rights Act is not longer needed? Or are portions of it like Section 5 obsolete?
The VRA law is a gigantic piece of legislation that was clearly needed in 1965. What is obsolete now is the Section 5 pre-clearance. Section 2 is not, and would never, become obsolete, because it seeks to enforce voting rights for everyone irrespective of ethnicity. We argued and won in 2009 because the evidence showed that states under Section 5 pre-clearance had voting results for minorities comparable to, or better than, states not covered by Section 5. The political forces seeking to keep Section 5 in place are not about minority voting rights - those forces want to keep power for federal judges to gerrymander legislative districts under the pretence of minority voting rights.
The VRA law is a gigantic piece of legislation that was clearly needed in 1965. What is obsolete now is the Section 5 pre-clearance. Section 2 is not, and would never, become obsolete, because it seeks to enforce voting rights for everyone irrespective of ethnicity. We argued and won in 2009 because the evidence showed that states under Section 5 pre-clearance had voting results for minorities comparable to, or better than, states not covered by Section 5. The political forces seeking to keep Section 5 in place are not about minority voting rights - those forces want to keep power for federal judges to gerrymander legislative districts under the pretence of minority voting rights.