What’d Happen Without Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act?

I started thinking recently about what our country would look like in the future if Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) were to be declared unconstitutional. This is the part of the law that requires states to check with the Justice Department that boundaries do not disenfranchise voters before being approved. This is not an unlikely possibility, because currently the Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott has appealed the Justice Department’s (DOJ) failure to pre-clear the Texas Voter ID law. He’s arguing that Section 5 would not dilute the power of Latino voters, and that it is basically no longer necessary.

If Section 5 fell, then any jurisdiction in Texas could modify any of their election laws without worrying about having to ask permission of DOJ or the Washington D.C. District Court. This means that any jurisdiction could close any polling place where they felt there was low voter turnout. So, for instance they could combine several precincts that had low voter turnout, and then rotate the polling place around every election, just to save money. This happened to me once when I lived in a relatively rural area of San Antonio and I missed voting half the time because I couldn’t find the polling place!

If Section 5 fell, then any jurisdiction in Texas could alter the early voting times, number of days and so forth, minimizing the convenience of going to the polls and thereby diluting the vote. The state could impose stricter voter identification laws then they are currently proposing — maybe Texas would only allow those that had a photo concealed weapons identity card to vote. Governor Rick Perry once proposed that Texas secede from the union, so it is possible that even if one held a passport issued by the United States government, it would not be accepted as proof of citizenship for voting purposes.

This would also eliminate all students, soldiers or retired veterans.

If Section 5 fell, then lengthier residency requirements where you had to prove land ownership would be required before one were allowed to even register to vote. This would eliminate all renters or students who don’t happen to own their dormitories. The State of Texas could reinstate the poll tax, which in today’s dollars, would probably be valued at more than $100. So if one did not have $100 in discretionary monies available when it was time to pay your voting taxes, then you simply could not vote. God forbid if you lost your receipt and could not prove you had paid the tax.

If Section 5 fell (am I getting poetic here), then Texas could reinstitute the literacy test as part of being allowed to register to vote. So one would have to prove they could read, recite the Constitution of the United States (if Texas dared to recognize that country’s existence) or recite the Constitution of the State of Texas, which is so long no one could memorize it anyway. This would eliminate almost everyone, given the level of educational attainment in the state.

If Section 5 fell, then any redistricting would be completely unsupervised by the federal government and minority communities could be split up in any number of ways, effectively ending all possibilities of having Latinos, African or Asian Americans elected to any of our august state’s legislative bodies.

If Section 5 fell — well you get by drift. If Section 5 fell, the State of Texas’ election system would return to what it looked like in 1876, and before. Latinos and blacks would cease to have a voice in Texas state government. Section 5, as far as Texas is concerned, is one of the few bulwarks underrepresented people have in their attempts at having their voices heard. Without Section 5 of the VRA, Latinos and blacks would become politically invisible and subject to the dictates of the numerical minority.