Article on Dole&#039;s Voting Rights Record and Voting Rights Compromise Bill, May 8, 1982

Article on Dole's Voting Rights Record and Voting Rights Compromise Bill, May 8, 1982

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Extent (Dublin Core): 2 Pages
File Name (Dublin Core): s-press_058_007_011
Title (Dublin Core): Article on Dole's Voting Rights Record and Voting Rights Compromise Bill, May 8, 1982
Date (Dublin Core): 1982-05-08
Date Created (Dublin Core): 1982-05-08
Congress (Dublin Core): 97th (1981-1983)
Topics (Dublin Core): See all items with this value Suffrage; See all items with this value Racial gerrymandering; See all items with this value Voting
Policy Area (Curation): Civil Rights and Liberties, Minority Issues
Creator (Dublin Core): Congressional Quarterly, inc.
Record Type (Dublin Core): articles
Names (Dublin Core): See all items with this value Dole, Robert J., 1923-2021; See all items with this value United States. Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1982
Rights (Dublin Core): http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/
Language (Dublin Core): eng
Collection Finding Aid (Dublin Core): https://dolearchivecollections.ku.edu/index.php?p=collections/findingaid&id=14&q=
Physical Location (Dublin Core): Collection 006, Box 58, Folder 7
Institution (Dublin Core): Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
Archival Collection (Dublin Core): Robert J. Dole Senate Papers-Press Related Materials, 1961-1996
Full Text (Extract Text): (Page 1)
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas http://dolearchives.ku.edu
(Break)
Law Enforcement/Judiciary - 2
(Break)
Sen. Robert Dole: The Man in the Middle
Mention the name of Robert Dole, R-Kan., chairman of the Sen- ate Finance Committee, and most Capitol Hill observers immediately think of the budget, taxes and the nation's economic affairs.
In the last month, however, Dole has played a strategic role in legislation far removed from his usual purview - a bill extending key provisions of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The Kansas Republican was the architect of a compromise version of the measure (S 1992) that was approved 14-4 May 4 by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Largely because of Dole's efforts, the bill won the support of six of the committee's 10 Republicans and the endorsement of President Reagan. (Story p. 1041)
The senator, preoccupied with fiscal 1983 budget negotiations, was a latecomer to the debate that had raged for months over a strong House-passed voting rights bill.
Neither he nor Howell Heflin, D-Ala., had committed himself on the House bill and as the Judiciary Committee votes lay, they held the balance of power. With the GOP in control of the Senate and White House, Dole, rather than Heflin, was the logical member to mold a compromise.
"I hadn't had time to look at the House bill," Dole said. "When I did look at it, I decided, well, maybe we can make a few changes."
Dole then undertook days of delicate negotiations with his colleagues, civil rights groups and the administration, assessing the political situation and fitting himself neatly into the breach that had developed between the two sides on the voting rights issue. (Dole profile, 1981 Weekly Report p. 1207)
Dole's generally positive civil rights record over the last 20 years gave him an entree to civil rights leaders. At the same time, he was able to parlay his credentials as a traditional GOP loyalist into a working arrangement with committee Republicans Charles E. Grassley, Iowa, Alan K. Simpson, Wyo., and Paul Laxalt, Nev.
At the White House - which had opposed the House measure - Dole had the ear of presidential advisers Edwin Meese III and James A. Baker III. He also enjoyed special influence with the president's assistant for public liaison: Elizabeth H. Dole, the senator's wife. As he acknowledged May 4, "she was working pretty hard on this."
Dole said he told White House officials blunt political facts - that the House bill probably could pass the Senate, with or without President Reagan's blessing, and that they would do well to support a
Alt text: head shot of Senator Dole in a suit
compromise that addressed their specific concerns.
(Break)
Dole and Civil Rights
Although Dole's legislative record is not unblemished from civil rights leaders' viewpoint, it is better than that of many Republicans. He has voted for every major civil rights bill of the last 20 years, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, 1968 fair housing legislation, and extensions of the Voting Rights Act in 1970 and 1975.
However, in a December 1980 fight on fair housing legislation, Dole was one of eight key senators who voted against cutting off a filibuster on a bill to strengthen existing fair housing laws. The bill, strongly backed by civil rights groups, then died. (1980 Almanac p. 373)
In the 96th and 97th Congress Dole voted for anti-busing provisions attached to Justice Department funding bills. On March 2 he voted with 56 other senators to approve the most restrictive anti-busing language ever adopted by the Senate. (Weekly Report p. 522)
Within the Republican Party, Dole - a former national GOP chairman and the party's 1976 vice presidential candidate - for a decade has urged greater attention to minority groups and their concerns. Early in 1978, for example, he told a GOP group in Atlanta that Republicans "need to make the extra effort to erase the lingering image of our party as the cadre of the elite, the wealthy, the insensitive .... Our job now is to demonstrate [our] concern to blacks and others who doubt our sincerity."
The senator, who made an abortive bid for the 1980 GOP presidential nomination and is thought by some colleagues to be interested in another try some day, said he was not anticipating great benefit to the party on the voting rights issue because most black leaders still are Democrats and blacks "are used to being Democrats."
"But I think we just keep trying," he said. "I don't think we throw in the towel and say well, 'Only eight percent vote for us and don't worry about it.'"
Dole believes it was his civil rights record that enabled him to be the catalyst on the voting rights bill. "I had credibility," he said. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D- Del., the ranking Judiciary Democrat, believes Dole's Republican standing was equally important.
"You had to have somebody who had good conservative credentials, if not to undercut at least to neutralize the far right," Biden observed.
"Dole gives someone like Sen. Grassley legitimacy with his constituency," Biden said.
-By Nadine Cohodas
PAGE 1042-May 8, 1982
COPYRIGHT 1982 CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC. Reproduction prohibited in whole or in part except by editorial clients.
s-press_058_007_011_A1b.pdf
(Page 2)
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas http://dolearchives.ku.edu
(break)
Law Enforcement/Judiciary - 3
country and would lead to proportional representation for minorities.
The Dole compromise kept the House "results" test but added a section spelling out how the test could be met. Its language was taken directly from a 1973 Supreme Court case, White p. Register, that involved the dilution of minority votes in two Texas counties. The bill states that a violation can be proved "if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the state or political subdivision are not equally open to participation" by minority groups.
Concerning proportional representation, the bill states that "nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class [minority groups] elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population."
Although the compromise was tailored to meet his concerns, Hatch professed dissatisfaction with the Dole proposal. In lengthy remarks, he contended that despite the added language on the "results test," thousands of at-large systems in the country would be in jeopardy if the bill is enacted.
"This language amounts to little more than cosmetics .... The consequences of the bill will be to inject racial considerations into more and more political decisions that formerly had nothing to do with race," Hatch said.
He contended that courts would be able to undo electoral systems simply by looking at how many minority members were on a city council or commission, for example, and then finding one other factor indicating bias, such as segregated housing or racial bloc voting.
(Break)
Section Five Modification
The other major change in the Dole compromise dealt with Section Five, which requires nine states and portions of 13 others to get Justice Department approval for any election law changes. A covered jurisdiction can get out from under the law only if it can prove it has not used a voting test or device during a specified period of time - a standard that states covered since 1965 have been unable to meet. Section Five was extended in 1970 and 1975.
The House bill kept Section Five in its present form until 1984. At that time it would become permanent, but a new "bail-out" section would go into effect allowing any covered jurisdiction to bail out if it could meet several criteria intended to show a clean voting rights record. As under current law, bailout cases would be heard by a three- judge federal court in the District of Columbia.
The Dole compromise keeps the basic House bailout requirements, but it puts a 25-year limit on the extension of Section Five.
The Dole proposal also requires congressional review of Section Five and the bailout after 15 years, although Dole said May 4 that Congress could review these provisions at any time prior to 1997.
(Break)
East Amendments
East offered 10 amendments that opponents said would weaken the bill, but only one was accepted. By a 10-8 vote the committee agreed to language that would bar an officer or agent of a voter's labor union from assisting the voter in the voting booth. This amended a provision in the bill that would allow assistance to blind or disabled voters and voters unable to read or write.
The provision originally had barred assistance only from a voter's employer or an agent of the employer. East argued that if an employer were barred from helping a
voter, a union official also should be barred.
East offered one amendment barring a judge from considering the use of an at-large system as part of the evidence of discrimination in a Section Two case. He said without such language, at-large systems would be suspect, despite contentions by others to the contrary.
"Let's not go in here with a constitutional wrecking crew or like a bull in the constitutional China shop," East said in arguing for his amendment, which was rejected 5-13.
Another amendment that would have allowed lawsuits under Section Five to be heard in local federal courts rather than in the District of Columbia was rejected 6-12. The full House had rejected a similar proposal when it considered HR 3112 last October. (Key Votes, 1981 Almanac p. 8-C)
A third East amendment that would have required all Section Two cases to be heard in the District of Columbia instead of in local federal courts was rejected 4-14.
Kennedy pointed out that Section Two cases are privately initiated, while Section Five cases that are tried in Washington involve the federal government and state or local governments. He said it would be inefficient and difficult to have the Justice Department "running all over the country" trying cases.
(Break)
Provisions
As ordered reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee, S 1992 included the following provisions:
· Allowed private parties, under Section Two of the act, to prove a voting rights violation by showing that an election law or procedure had been imposed or applied in a manner that "results" in voting discrimination. The provision specified that a court would have to look at the "totality of circumstances" in determining whether a voting rights violation had been proved.
· Specified that in a Section Two lawsuit there is no right to proportional representation for a minority group and that lack of proportional representation is only one circumstance a court can consider.
· Extended the existing pre-clearance mechanism in Section Five for 25 years, until 2007.
· Provided a new bailout section to take effect in 1984 allowing a covered jurisdiction to bail out if it could show a three-judge panel in the District of Columbia that it had a clean voting rights record for the preceding 10 years.
· Required as proof of a clean record the following: local authorities had not used any voting test or device in a discriminatory way; there had been no final judgment of a federal court finding a violation of the voting rights law; there had been no consent decree, settlement or agreement entered into concerning voting rights violations; the attorney general had not been required to send in federal examiners to help register voters; local officials had complied with the pre-clearance requirement by making all required submissions to the Justice Department, and had repealed all election law changes the department objected to; and the jurisdictions had made "constructive efforts" to bring minority groups into the election process and to end any intimidation or harassment of prospective voters.
· Extended until 1992 provisions requiring certain areas of the country to provide bilingual election materials.
· Authorized any voter who is blind, disabled or unable to read to receive assistance in voting from a person of his or her choice, except that such assistance may not be provided by the voter's employer or union officer. .
COPYRIGHT 1982 CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC. Reproduction prohibited in whole or in part except by editorial clients.
May 8, 1982-PAGE 1043
s-press_058_007_011_A1b.pdf
Page 2 of 2; (Page 1)
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas http://dolearchives.ku.edu
(Break)
Law Enforcement/Judiciary - 2
(Break)
Sen. Robert Dole: The Man in the Middle
Mention the name of Robert Dole, R-Kan., chairman of the Sen- ate Finance Committee, and most Capitol Hill observers immediately think of the budget, taxes and the nation's economic affairs.
In the last month, however, Dole has played a strategic role in legislation far removed from his usual purview - a bill extending key provisions of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The Kansas Republican was the architect of a compromise version of the measure (S 1992) that was approved 14-4 May 4 by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Largely because of Dole's efforts, the bill won the support of six of the committee's 10 Republicans and the endorsement of President Reagan. (Story p. 1041)
The senator, preoccupied with fiscal 1983 budget negotiations, was a latecomer to the debate that had raged for months over a strong House-passed voting rights bill.
Neither he nor Howell Heflin, D-Ala., had committed himself on the House bill and as the Judiciary Committee votes lay, they held the balance of power. With the GOP in control of the Senate and White House, Dole, rather than Heflin, was the logical member to mold a compromise.
"I hadn't had time to look at the House bill," Dole said. "When I did look at it, I decided, well, maybe we can make a few changes."
Dole then undertook days of delicate negotiations with his colleagues, civil rights groups and the administration, assessing the political situation and fitting himself neatly into the breach that had developed between the two sides on the voting rights issue. (Dole profile, 1981 Weekly Report p. 1207)
Dole's generally positive civil rights record over the last 20 years gave him an entree to civil rights leaders. At the same time, he was able to parlay his credentials as a traditional GOP loyalist into a working arrangement with committee Republicans Charles E. Grassley, Iowa, Alan K. Simpson, Wyo., and Paul Laxalt, Nev.
At the White House - which had opposed the House measure - Dole had the ear of presidential advisers Edwin Meese III and James A. Baker III. He also enjoyed special influence with the president's assistant for public liaison: Elizabeth H. Dole, the senator's wife. As he acknowledged May 4, "she was working pretty hard on this."
Dole said he told White House officials blunt political facts - that the House bill probably could pass the Senate, with or without President Reagan's blessing, and that they would do well to support a
Alt text: head shot of Senator Dole in a suit
compromise that addressed their specific concerns.
(Break)
Dole and Civil Rights
Although Dole's legislative record is not unblemished from civil rights leaders' viewpoint, it is better than that of many Republicans. He has voted for every major civil rights bill of the last 20 years, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, 1968 fair housing legislation, and extensions of the Voting Rights Act in 1970 and 1975.
However, in a December 1980 fight on fair housing legislation, Dole was one of eight key senators who voted against cutting off a filibuster on a bill to strengthen existing fair housing laws. The bill, strongly backed by civil rights groups, then died. (1980 Almanac p. 373)
In the 96th and 97th Congress Dole voted for anti-busing provisions attached to Justice Department funding bills. On March 2 he voted with 56 other senators to approve the most restrictive anti-busing language ever adopted by the Senate. (Weekly Report p. 522)
Within the Republican Party, Dole - a former national GOP chairman and the party's 1976 vice presidential candidate - for a decade has urged greater attention to minority groups and their concerns. Early in 1978, for example, he told a GOP group in Atlanta that Republicans "need to make the extra effort to erase the lingering image of our party as the cadre of the elite, the wealthy, the insensitive .... Our job now is to demonstrate [our] concern to blacks and others who doubt our sincerity."
The senator, who made an abortive bid for the 1980 GOP presidential nomination and is thought by some colleagues to be interested in another try some day, said he was not anticipating great benefit to the party on the voting rights issue because most black leaders still are Democrats and blacks "are used to being Democrats."
"But I think we just keep trying," he said. "I don't think we throw in the towel and say well, 'Only eight percent vote for us and don't worry about it.'"
Dole believes it was his civil rights record that enabled him to be the catalyst on the voting rights bill. "I had credibility," he said. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D- Del., the ranking Judiciary Democrat, believes Dole's Republican standing was equally important.
"You had to have somebody who had good conservative credentials, if not to undercut at least to neutralize the far right," Biden observed.
"Dole gives someone like Sen. Grassley legitimacy with his constituency," Biden said.
-By Nadine Cohodas
PAGE 1042-May 8, 1982
COPYRIGHT 1982 CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC. Reproduction prohibited in whole or in part except by editorial clients.
s-press_058_007_011_A1b.pdf
(Page 2)
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas http://dolearchives.ku.edu
(break)
Law Enforcement/Judiciary - 3
country and would lead to proportional representation for minorities.
The Dole compromise kept the House "results" test but added a section spelling out how the test could be met. Its language was taken directly from a 1973 Supreme Court case, White p. Register, that involved the dilution of minority votes in two Texas counties. The bill states that a violation can be proved "if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the state or political subdivision are not equally open to participation" by minority groups.
Concerning proportional representation, the bill states that "nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class [minority groups] elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population."
Although the compromise was tailored to meet his concerns, Hatch professed dissatisfaction with the Dole proposal. In lengthy remarks, he contended that despite the added language on the "results test," thousands of at-large systems in the country would be in jeopardy if the bill is enacted.
"This language amounts to little more than cosmetics .... The consequences of the bill will be to inject racial considerations into more and more political decisions that formerly had nothing to do with race," Hatch said.
He contended that courts would be able to undo electoral systems simply by looking at how many minority members were on a city council or commission, for example, and then finding one other factor indicating bias, such as segregated housing or racial bloc voting.
(Break)
Section Five Modification
The other major change in the Dole compromise dealt with Section Five, which requires nine states and portions of 13 others to get Justice Department approval for any election law changes. A covered jurisdiction can get out from under the law only if it can prove it has not used a voting test or device during a specified period of time - a standard that states covered since 1965 have been unable to meet. Section Five was extended in 1970 and 1975.
The House bill kept Section Five in its present form until 1984. At that time it would become permanent, but a new "bail-out" section would go into effect allowing any covered jurisdiction to bail out if it could meet several criteria intended to show a clean voting rights record. As under current law, bailout cases would be heard by a three- judge federal court in the District of Columbia.
The Dole compromise keeps the basic House bailout requirements, but it puts a 25-year limit on the extension of Section Five.
The Dole proposal also requires congressional review of Section Five and the bailout after 15 years, although Dole said May 4 that Congress could review these provisions at any time prior to 1997.
(Break)
East Amendments
East offered 10 amendments that opponents said would weaken the bill, but only one was accepted. By a 10-8 vote the committee agreed to language that would bar an officer or agent of a voter's labor union from assisting the voter in the voting booth. This amended a provision in the bill that would allow assistance to blind or disabled voters and voters unable to read or write.
The provision originally had barred assistance only from a voter's employer or an agent of the employer. East argued that if an employer were barred from helping a
voter, a union official also should be barred.
East offered one amendment barring a judge from considering the use of an at-large system as part of the evidence of discrimination in a Section Two case. He said without such language, at-large systems would be suspect, despite contentions by others to the contrary.
"Let's not go in here with a constitutional wrecking crew or like a bull in the constitutional China shop," East said in arguing for his amendment, which was rejected 5-13.
Another amendment that would have allowed lawsuits under Section Five to be heard in local federal courts rather than in the District of Columbia was rejected 6-12. The full House had rejected a similar proposal when it considered HR 3112 last October. (Key Votes, 1981 Almanac p. 8-C)
A third East amendment that would have required all Section Two cases to be heard in the District of Columbia instead of in local federal courts was rejected 4-14.
Kennedy pointed out that Section Two cases are privately initiated, while Section Five cases that are tried in Washington involve the federal government and state or local governments. He said it would be inefficient and difficult to have the Justice Department "running all over the country" trying cases.
(Break)
Provisions
As ordered reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee, S 1992 included the following provisions:
· Allowed private parties, under Section Two of the act, to prove a voting rights violation by showing that an election law or procedure had been imposed or applied in a manner that "results" in voting discrimination. The provision specified that a court would have to look at the "totality of circumstances" in determining whether a voting rights violation had been proved.
· Specified that in a Section Two lawsuit there is no right to proportional representation for a minority group and that lack of proportional representation is only one circumstance a court can consider.
· Extended the existing pre-clearance mechanism in Section Five for 25 years, until 2007.
· Provided a new bailout section to take effect in 1984 allowing a covered jurisdiction to bail out if it could show a three-judge panel in the District of Columbia that it had a clean voting rights record for the preceding 10 years.
· Required as proof of a clean record the following: local authorities had not used any voting test or device in a discriminatory way; there had been no final judgment of a federal court finding a violation of the voting rights law; there had been no consent decree, settlement or agreement entered into concerning voting rights violations; the attorney general had not been required to send in federal examiners to help register voters; local officials had complied with the pre-clearance requirement by making all required submissions to the Justice Department, and had repealed all election law changes the department objected to; and the jurisdictions had made "constructive efforts" to bring minority groups into the election process and to end any intimidation or harassment of prospective voters.
· Extended until 1992 provisions requiring certain areas of the country to provide bilingual election materials.
· Authorized any voter who is blind, disabled or unable to read to receive assistance in voting from a person of his or her choice, except that such assistance may not be provided by the voter's employer or union officer. .
COPYRIGHT 1982 CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC. Reproduction prohibited in whole or in part except by editorial clients.
May 8, 1982-PAGE 1043
s-press_058_007_011_A1b.pdf
Page 2 of 2; (Page 1)
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas http://dolearchives.ku.edu
(Break)
Law Enforcement/Judiciary - 2
(Break)
Sen. Robert Dole: The Man in the Middle
Mention the name of Robert Dole, R-Kan., chairman of the Sen- ate Finance Committee, and most Capitol Hill observers immediately think of the budget, taxes and the nation's economic affairs.
In the last month, however, Dole has played a strategic role in legislation far removed from his usual purview - a bill extending key provisions of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The Kansas Republican was the architect of a compromise version of the measure (S 1992) that was approved 14-4 May 4 by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Largely because of Dole's efforts, the bill won the support of six of the committee's 10 Republicans and the endorsement of President Reagan. (Story p. 1041)
The senator, preoccupied with fiscal 1983 budget negotiations, was a latecomer to the debate that had raged for months over a strong House-passed voting rights bill.
Neither he nor Howell Heflin, D-Ala., had committed himself on the House bill and as the Judiciary Committee votes lay, they held the balance of power. With the GOP in control of the Senate and White House, Dole, rather than Heflin, was the logical member to mold a compromise.
"I hadn't had time to look at the House bill," Dole said. "When I did look at it, I decided, well, maybe we can make a few changes."
Dole then undertook days of delicate negotiations with his colleagues, civil rights groups and the administration, assessing the political situation and fitting himself neatly into the breach that had developed between the two sides on the voting rights issue. (Dole profile, 1981 Weekly Report p. 1207)
Dole's generally positive civil rights record over the last 20 years gave him an entree to civil rights leaders. At the same time, he was able to parlay his credentials as a traditional GOP loyalist into a working arrangement with committee Republicans Charles E. Grassley, Iowa, Alan K. Simpson, Wyo., and Paul Laxalt, Nev.
At the White House - which had opposed the House measure - Dole had the ear of presidential advisers Edwin Meese III and James A. Baker III. He also enjoyed special influence with the president's assistant for public liaison: Elizabeth H. Dole, the senator's wife. As he acknowledged May 4, "she was working pretty hard on this."
Dole said he told White House officials blunt political facts - that the House bill probably could pass the Senate, with or without President Reagan's blessing, and that they would do well to support a
Alt text: head shot of Senator Dole in a suit
compromise that addressed their specific concerns.
(Break)
Dole and Civil Rights
Although Dole's legislative record is not unblemished from civil rights leaders' viewpoint, it is better than that of many Republicans. He has voted for every major civil rights bill of the last 20 years, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, 1968 fair housing legislation, and extensions of the Voting Rights Act in 1970 and 1975.
However, in a December 1980 fight on fair housing legislation, Dole was one of eight key senators who voted against cutting off a filibuster on a bill to strengthen existing fair housing laws. The bill, strongly backed by civil rights groups, then died. (1980 Almanac p. 373)
In the 96th and 97th Congress Dole voted for anti-busing provisions attached to Justice Department funding bills. On March 2 he voted with 56 other senators to approve the most restrictive anti-busing language ever adopted by the Senate. (Weekly Report p. 522)
Within the Republican Party, Dole - a former national GOP chairman and the party's 1976 vice presidential candidate - for a decade has urged greater attention to minority groups and their concerns. Early in 1978, for example, he told a GOP group in Atlanta that Republicans "need to make the extra effort to erase the lingering image of our party as the cadre of the elite, the wealthy, the insensitive .... Our job now is to demonstrate [our] concern to blacks and others who doubt our sincerity."
The senator, who made an abortive bid for the 1980 GOP presidential nomination and is thought by some colleagues to be interested in another try some day, said he was not anticipating great benefit to the party on the voting rights issue because most black leaders still are Democrats and blacks "are used to being Democrats."
"But I think we just keep trying," he said. "I don't think we throw in the towel and say well, 'Only eight percent vote for us and don't worry about it.'"
Dole believes it was his civil rights record that enabled him to be the catalyst on the voting rights bill. "I had credibility," he said. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D- Del., the ranking Judiciary Democrat, believes Dole's Republican standing was equally important.
"You had to have somebody who had good conservative credentials, if not to undercut at least to neutralize the far right," Biden observed.
"Dole gives someone like Sen. Grassley legitimacy with his constituency," Biden said.
-By Nadine Cohodas
PAGE 1042-May 8, 1982
COPYRIGHT 1982 CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC. Reproduction prohibited in whole or in part except by editorial clients.
s-press_058_007_011_A1b.pdf
(Page 2)
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas http://dolearchives.ku.edu
(break)
Law Enforcement/Judiciary - 3
country and would lead to proportional representation for minorities.
The Dole compromise kept the House "results" test but added a section spelling out how the test could be met. Its language was taken directly from a 1973 Supreme Court case, White p. Register, that involved the dilution of minority votes in two Texas counties. The bill states that a violation can be proved "if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the state or political subdivision are not equally open to participation" by minority groups.
Concerning proportional representation, the bill states that "nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class [minority groups] elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population."
Although the compromise was tailored to meet his concerns, Hatch professed dissatisfaction with the Dole proposal. In lengthy remarks, he contended that despite the added language on the "results test," thousands of at-large systems in the country would be in jeopardy if the bill is enacted.
"This language amounts to little more than cosmetics .... The consequences of the bill will be to inject racial considerations into more and more political decisions that formerly had nothing to do with race," Hatch said.
He contended that courts would be able to undo electoral systems simply by looking at how many minority members were on a city council or commission, for example, and then finding one other factor indicating bias, such as segregated housing or racial bloc voting.
(Break)
Section Five Modification
The other major change in the Dole compromise dealt with Section Five, which requires nine states and portions of 13 others to get Justice Department approval for any election law changes. A covered jurisdiction can get out from under the law only if it can prove it has not used a voting test or device during a specified period of time - a standard that states covered since 1965 have been unable to meet. Section Five was extended in 1970 and 1975.
The House bill kept Section Five in its present form until 1984. At that time it would become permanent, but a new "bail-out" section would go into effect allowing any covered jurisdiction to bail out if it could meet several criteria intended to show a clean voting rights record. As under current law, bailout cases would be heard by a three- judge federal court in the District of Columbia.
The Dole compromise keeps the basic House bailout requirements, but it puts a 25-year limit on the extension of Section Five.
The Dole proposal also requires congressional review of Section Five and the bailout after 15 years, although Dole said May 4 that Congress could review these provisions at any time prior to 1997.
(Break)
East Amendments
East offered 10 amendments that opponents said would weaken the bill, but only one was accepted. By a 10-8 vote the committee agreed to language that would bar an officer or agent of a voter's labor union from assisting the voter in the voting booth. This amended a provision in the bill that would allow assistance to blind or disabled voters and voters unable to read or write.
The provision originally had barred assistance only from a voter's employer or an agent of the employer. East argued that if an employer were barred from helping a
voter, a union official also should be barred.
East offered one amendment barring a judge from considering the use of an at-large system as part of the evidence of discrimination in a Section Two case. He said without such language, at-large systems would be suspect, despite contentions by others to the contrary.
"Let's not go in here with a constitutional wrecking crew or like a bull in the constitutional China shop," East said in arguing for his amendment, which was rejected 5-13.
Another amendment that would have allowed lawsuits under Section Five to be heard in local federal courts rather than in the District of Columbia was rejected 6-12. The full House had rejected a similar proposal when it considered HR 3112 last October. (Key Votes, 1981 Almanac p. 8-C)
A third East amendment that would have required all Section Two cases to be heard in the District of Columbia instead of in local federal courts was rejected 4-14.
Kennedy pointed out that Section Two cases are privately initiated, while Section Five cases that are tried in Washington involve the federal government and state or local governments. He said it would be inefficient and difficult to have the Justice Department "running all over the country" trying cases.
(Break)
Provisions
As ordered reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee, S 1992 included the following provisions:
· Allowed private parties, under Section Two of the act, to prove a voting rights violation by showing that an election law or procedure had been imposed or applied in a manner that "results" in voting discrimination. The provision specified that a court would have to look at the "totality of circumstances" in determining whether a voting rights violation had been proved.
· Specified that in a Section Two lawsuit there is no right to proportional representation for a minority group and that lack of proportional representation is only one circumstance a court can consider.
· Extended the existing pre-clearance mechanism in Section Five for 25 years, until 2007.
· Provided a new bailout section to take effect in 1984 allowing a covered jurisdiction to bail out if it could show a three-judge panel in the District of Columbia that it had a clean voting rights record for the preceding 10 years.
· Required as proof of a clean record the following: local authorities had not used any voting test or device in a discriminatory way; there had been no final judgment of a federal court finding a violation of the voting rights law; there had been no consent decree, settlement or agreement entered into concerning voting rights violations; the attorney general had not been required to send in federal examiners to help register voters; local officials had complied with the pre-clearance requirement by making all required submissions to the Justice Department, and had repealed all election law changes the department objected to; and the jurisdictions had made "constructive efforts" to bring minority groups into the election process and to end any intimidation or harassment of prospective voters.
· Extended until 1992 provisions requiring certain areas of the country to provide bilingual election materials.
· Authorized any voter who is blind, disabled or unable to read to receive assistance in voting from a person of his or her choice, except that such assistance may not be provided by the voter's employer or union officer. .
COPYRIGHT 1982 CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC. Reproduction prohibited in whole or in part except by editorial clients.
May 8, 1982-PAGE 1043
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