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Social Movements & Civic Participation
Renewal of provisions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is crucial in order to increase representation of the Latino community, which remains underrepresented in Houston and the rest of the country. The act was amended in 1982 under President Reagan and renewed for 25 more years.
Provisions of the VRA related to pre-clearance, the appointing of election monitors and language assistance are set to expire in August of 2007. The act has jurisdiction in Texas due to the state’s history of discriminatory practices when it comes to voting. Section 5 requires Texas to obtain pre-clearance on any proposed changes in election laws or procedures from the Justice Department.
“I think that the way we draw our districts now is pretty seriously contaminated,” University of Houston Political Science Professor Richard Murray said. “They’re drawn too much with these pure political considerations in mind and not the convenience of voters or communities, so we have a lot of funny drawn districts.”
Section 5 requires that the maps of redrawn districts be submitted to the Justice Department. District maps are redrawn after every census. If they violate the Voting Rights Act, they have to be redrawn. Sections 6, 7 and 9 of the act give Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott the authority to assign federal examiners to election sites. Section 8 authorizes the attorney general to appoint federal poll-watchers wherever federal examiners are assigned.
“The VRA has been a very important mechanism to encourage more black and Hispanic men and women to run for elected office and more often to get elected,” Murray said.
When the Mexican American War ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexicans in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas became American citizens. Their inability to speak English along with a poll tax and literacy test in order to register to vote effectively excluded them from voting.
Language assistance became a requirement in 1975 under section 203 of the act. Four language groups are included: American Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives and those of Spanish heritage.
The act mandates language assistance when one or more of the language groups has limited English proficiency and makes up at least 5 percent of the voting-age population, or when one of the groups with limited proficiency has more than 10,000 voting-age individuals in a county. Limited proficiency means that the illiteracy rate among those in a language group is higher than the national illiteracy rate.
The U.S. Department of Justice recently notified Harris County that the Vietnamese community qualified for language assistance. The Justice Department decides whether a protected group requires language assistance. The 2000 Census found that 33,024 registered Vietnamese voters lived in Harris County.
Former national treasurer for the League of United Latin American Citizens, Frank Ortiz, said “It gave us some protection as far as going to vote. It stopped intimidation. It established some federal guidelines where the voters were protected, and our people came out to vote.”
The 2000 Census found that Latinos make up almost one-third of the Texas population as well as the Harris County population. Yet, the state doesn’t have any Latinos in the Senate and only has six Hispanics out of the 32 representatives in the Texas House.
“It’s beyond a doubt that in this nation today, perhaps the most dispossessed minority is the Hispanic and Latin minority,” Texas Southern University Law Professor Martin Levy said.
Two out of 15 Houston City Council members are Latino, which is 13 percent compared to 27 percent of Latinos in the city population. They are Carol Alvarado and Adrian Garcia.
“Given the nature of Congress at the moment, I think there are substantial questions as to whether these provisions would be renewed or not,” Levy said.
On the other hand, Murray said both political parties have an interest in renewing the Voting Rights Act because they want political support from minority communities.
“They would perhaps cut off their opportunities to do better with Hispanic voters especially,” Murray said.
“It was really the black organizations that started a movement [for civil rights and voting rights]. But as soon as we saw it, we saw that it was good for our people also. So we joined the NAACP and other black organizations to push for the Voting Rights Act,” Ortiz said.
He adds the Latino community has benefited from the act, but it has seen slow progress. Ortiz said the government would be more sensitive to the Latino community’s needs if more Latinos went out to vote.
“The problems are more severe in these big new urban communities like Dallas and Harris that have had an explosion in Hispanic population, but there’s nowhere near their political representation in these counties,” Murray said.
© Copyright World Internet News 2006-07
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