South rebels against voting rights act extension

NY Times:

House Republican leaders abruptly canceled a planned vote to renew the Voting Rights Act on Wednesday after a rebellion by lawmakers who said the civil rights measure unfairly singled out Southern states and unnecessarily required ballots to be printed in foreign languages.

The reversal represented a significant embarrassment for the party leadership, which had promised a vote to extend the act, the 1965 law that is credited with ending rampant discrimination at the polls and electing black officeholders throughout the South. Early last month, House and Senate leaders of both parties gathered on the steps of the Capitol in a rare bipartisan moment to celebrate its imminent approval.

But just hours before the vote was to occur Wednesday, lawmakers critical of the bill mutinied in a closed morning meeting of House Republicans, raising sufficient objections to prompt the leadership to pull the bill indefinitely.

Several lawmakers said it was uncertain whether a majority of Republicans would back the legislation without the changes sought by critics, and under the House leadership's informal rules no bill can reach a vote without the support of a majority of the Republicans.

"A lot of it looks as if these are some old boys from the South who are trying to do away with it," said Representative Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, who said it would be unfair to keep Georgia under the confines of the law when his state has cleaned up its voting rights record. "But these old boys are trying to make it constitutional enough that it will withstand the scrutiny of the Supreme Court."

Despite the resistance, the Republican leadership issued a statement pledging to move ahead quickly with a vote once Republicans were given additional time to work out their differences.

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Bilinqual ballots are under attack by the English only crowd and there are real questions about why the south should be considered an occupied territory treated different from the rest of the nations years after voting discrimination has ceased. If they extend the act should apply to every state. I do not think there has been any voting discrimination in Texas in over 40 years or more. How many years does it take to get out of the penalty box? Are they just extending this law to make certain "victim" groups feel good, even though the law is no longer needed?