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Protection of Voting Rights
Published on AidPage by IDILOGIC on Jun 24, 2005
Program accomplishments...
The Civil Rights Division's Voting Section vigorously enforces the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and other laws that protect the right to vote. Primary enforcement efforts in fiscal year 2003 were (1) the administrative review of voting changes pursuant to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act; (2) monitoring of elections to ensure compliance with federal voting rights laws; (3) litigation to enforce federal voting rights laws; and (4) assumption of the enforcement responsibility for Title III of the Help America Vote Act ("HAVA"). During fiscal year 2003, the Civil Rights Division received 4,613 submissions of voting changes for administrative review under Section 5. This included 481 redistricting plans, making for a total of 2,428 redistricting plans received for Section 5 administrative review between April 1, 2001, when the 2000 Census data were released, and September 30, 2003. This represents an increase of over seven percent in the number of redistricting plans analyzed when compared with the same period following the release of the 1990 Census. On behalf of the Attorney General, the Division interposed seven objections during fiscal 2003; five to redistricting plans and two to methods of election. Recently, major Section 5 reviews have included the Texas Congressional redistricting plan, the reorganization of the New York city school system and the North Carolina legislative redistricting plans. North Carolina initially sought preclearance in the D.C. District Court, and that case was dismissed when the Division precleared it. The statewide redistricting reviews were the first conducted under a revised Section 5 standard set by the Supreme Court in Georgia v. Ashcroft, a major decision entered in 2003. The Division continued to implement the Voting Initiative announced by the Attorney General on March 7, 2001. Major emphasis was placed on monitoring of elections. In 2003, he Voting Section monitored a total 42 elections in 26 political subdivisions in 14 states with 380 Federal observers from OPM and 136 DOJ personnel. For the 2002 general election, 324 federal observers from the Office of Personnel Management and 108 Justice Department personnel were assigned to monitor in fourteen states, which was the highest number of monitors for a general election in many years. A major monitoring has continued in 2004. In addition, the Voting Section sponsored with the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division a symposium on federal voting issues for representatives of all United States Attorneys' offices. The Section maintained its vigorous litigation program, including affirmative enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act ("NVRA"). The Voting Section won a major decision in a Section 2 vote dilution case involving the use of at-large elections in Charleston County, South Carolina. In addition, it obtained an out of court settlement of another Section 2 vote dilution case against the Chelsea, MA School Committee. Enforcement of the language minority provisions of the Voting Right continued as a priority for the Section. The Voting Section brought a major case against Berks County, Pennsylvania, in which the court found that bilingual assistance was required under Sections 2 and 4(f)(2) of the Voting Rights Act. It entered an out of court settlement with Harris County, TX designed to ensure appropriate language assistance for Vietnamese-speaking citizens. It also entered into consent decrees in cases brought against the Brentwood Union Free School District in Suffolk County, New York, and with Orange County, Florida, to provide Spanish-language translation and assistance in school board elections as required by Section 203 of the Voting Right Act. In addition, it continued a major outreach effort to jurisdictions covered by Section 203 to ensure that appropriate language assistance isbeing provided to the affected language minority
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