STARKVILLE — There’s no real question that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act fundamentally changed the composition of the elected leadership of the South and that the provision served its purpose in circumventing oppressive Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised black Southern voters from Reconstruction to the mid-1960s.
Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act established nine states that were declared “covered jurisdictions” under the new laws. “Covered jurisdiction” states, counties and municipalities cannot implement voting law changes without federal “preclearance” by the Justice Department. States included in the “covered jurisdiction” by the Voting Rights Act include: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. There are also counties in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina, and South Dakota as well as some cities in Michigan and New Hampshire that are included.
The Voting Rights Act provided extensive federal oversight of elections administration in states with “a history of discriminatory voting practices” (which the act specified as the “covered jurisdictions”). Despite the passage of 47 years, the highest percentage of black voters in the country, and the largest number of black elected officials of any state in the union, Mississippi election law changes are still subject to federal preclearance — just as they are in the rest of the “covered jurisdictions.”
One needs look no deeper than the first 30 years of the Voting Rights Act’s existence in five Southern states to see its impact. In Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas, the total increase in black elected officials between 1970 and 2000 was more than tenfold. In 2000, Mississippi and Alabama together had more black elected officials (1,628) than the entire nation had in 1970. In1970, the 10 states with the highest number of black elected officials collectively had 821, while in 2000 the top 10 states had 5,887.
The 10 states with the largest number of black elected officials in 2000 were: Mississippi (897), Alabama (731), Louisiana (701), Illinois (621), Georgia (582), South Carolina (540), Arkansas (502), North Carolina (498), Texas (475) and Michigan (340).
But in the last decade, Section 5 states have begun to chafe under the law, while the U.S. Supreme Court has wondered aloud whether the central provisions of the Voting Rights Act have begun to outlive their usefulness. Six states – Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas – have asked the nation’s highest court to rule that all states have equal sovereignty in making election laws barring “compelling justification.”
Mississippi is not one of the six states challenging Section 5, but it clearly would be impacted by any substantial challenge to the law. Many proponents of declaring Section 5 unconstitutional in the political climate that exists in 2012 in Mississippi claim that the state’s existing slate of black elected officials is prima facie evidence that Section 5 enforcement is no longer necessary and indeed hampers Mississippi from making the same election laws as states that have a far less diverse electorate or slate of elected officials.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas have both expressed strong doubts as to the constitutional validity of Section 5 since 2009. Opponents of Section 5 who don’t have seats on the nation’s highest court argue that Section 5 has become politicized to the point that its enforcement is less about constitutional rights than it is about partisan political advantage.
With an overwhelming white majority in the Mississippi GOP and a similar black majority in the Mississippi Democratic Party, Mississippi is a textbook example of the quandary surrounding Section 5.
Although no judicial action is expected before the 2012 presidential election, it’s likely that a direct challenge to Section 5 will make it to the Supreme Court within the next 18 months. In the South, it’s a challenge that Republicans welcome and that Democrats tend to fear, given the current composition of the Supreme Court.
• Sid Salter is journalist-in-residence at Mississippi State University. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
