Posted on 07/22/2015 7:18:41 AM PDT by cotton1706
Last year, House Democrats saw ex-Majority Leader Eric Cantor as a possible (if ultimately disappointing) ally in the fight to rewrite the Voting Rights Act for the 21st century.
On Tuesday, Cantor’s leadership successor, Kevin McCarthy, might have revealed himself as another important potential friend to the effort.
The California Republican echoed at a pen-and-pad briefing what fellow GOP lawmakers have said before: Any revision of the landmark 1965 law has to start in the Judiciary Committee — a disappointing answer for advocates who know Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte, R-Va., is disinclined to tackle the matter.
But McCarthy later said he thinks the time has come for an “overall review.”
“On a personal level, I’d like to see the debate go forward,” he said. “I’d like to see [us] have the debate in committee. I think everything, when it’s first written and where the world is today, has changed. So just as most of our bills, how do you modernize?
“An overall review, I think, it’s the right time to do it,” McCarthy continued. “What the outcome can be, I don’t prejudge.”
McCarthy’s comments came after he was asked what he thought of House Democrats’ calls for Congress to take up legislation in response to the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that dismantled the VRA’s core enforcement provision.
While noncommittal, McCarthy’s remarks are the most optimistic comments on the VRA from any member of House GOP leadership since Cantor’s primary defeat in June 2014.
Before his exit from Congress, Democratic colleagues were skeptical about Cantor, but held out hope for the Virginia Republican’s support, coming on the heels of a 2013 pilgrimage to Selma, Ala., with civil rights icon and Georgia Democrat John Lewis, was sincere.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.rollcall.com ...
Keep pissing on conservative voters, GOPe.
Your time in a permanent minority is coming.
Can I ask a stupid question? Will be flamed by any liberal radical types, but here it is:
Do we still need a Voting Rights Act? I’ve heard that blacks in the south are registered and voting in record numbers. In some southern communities, blacks are registered at a higher rate than whites. In some southern communities, blacks are registrars of voters and work in the offices which register voters. The old literacy tests and other means of making people jump through hoops to register to vote are gone.
I’ve heard some liberals complain that the disabling of the Voting Rights Act enforcement provisions has allowed some places to restrict early voting, for example. Is there a constitutional right to vote up to a month before election day? As long as the early voting restrictions are applied equally to everyone, there is no equal protection of the laws violation anyway.
It seems to me that the Voting Rights Act succeeded in dismantling a discriminatory voting registration system. If the law goes away, it doesn’t mean that we are automatically back in the days of Jim Crow, in spite of what the MSNBC crowd is saying.
I smell Sensenbrenner in this disaster.
They are pissing on the US constitution and equal rights under the law regardless of skin color.
End it don’t mend it.
There is no right to vote in the Constitution, and they left it out on purpose.
The FOUNDERS had no intention that everyone should vote, and all efforts should be made to restrict the franchise in order to preserve the Republic.
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