Voting rights rules irk counties

Voting rights rules irk counties

Sacramento Bee, The (CA)

January 22, 2006

Several San Joaquin Valley counties remain ensnared in a voting rights law originally written to stop anti-black discrimination in the Deep South .

Now, some hope to change that.

With lobbyists on board, and Congress preparing to rewrite the far-reaching Voting Rights Act, Merced County officials are trying to finally escape the election restrictions that have bound them for three decades.

If successful, Merced County would no longer need Justice Department approval for the myriad precinct and ballot changes that precede every election. Merced County's campaign, in turn, could shake up things for Kings, Yuba and Monterey counties - the other three in the state that are likewise closely regulated under the Voting Rights Act.

"It's really costly to the taxpayers," Merced County Auditor M. Stephen Jones said, "and it's not accomplishing a single thing."

Through the Sacramento-based lobbying firm Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller and Naylor, Merced County is eyeing relief through new legislation. That might be a long shot, though it isn't the only option. Counties can theoretically escape Voting Rights Act control by meeting rigorous requirements spelled out in the law itself, but very few have.

"It's very, very difficult," Kings County counsel Peter Moock said.

But others say the counties have no business trying to find a legislative escape.

"We think they should be covered by the law," said John Trasvina, executive vice president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, or MALDEF. "If they think they should not be covered, they (already) have a process they can follow."

The Voting Rights Act requirements drew more attention than usual in August 2003, when California needed Justice Department permission to schedule that year's high-profile special election for October.

But even in the most routine of regularly scheduled elections, Merced , Kings, Yuba and Monterey counties must get a Justice Department permission slip. Supporters say it's an important tool in the Voting Rights Act.

The most recent election in Kings County shows how it works.

A Hanford bowling alley used to be a polling place, Moock noted, until the bowling alley's manager decided it was time to change. That was one of six polling place changes being proposed in Kings County in 2004. All needed Justice Department approval. Election officials also were trying to redraw the boundaries of 13 precincts in the county, and consolidate still other precincts.

First, though, county officials had to send back a packet of material to Washington . They weren't entirely mollified by the fact the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division ultimately gave the go-ahead within the 60-day time limit specified in the law.

"It just doesn't seem fair to us that we have this extra burden, and stigma," Moock said.

Last year, likewise, the Justice Department had the final say in local changes covering everything from the Merced Irrigation District to the Kettleman City Community Services District. Federal approval is needed when ballots change, or when new polling machines are bought; when new poll workers are hired, their names are run by the Justice Department.

"It does make it kind of difficult," said Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare.Visalia Republican Devin Nunes said.

Objections are rare in California . Justice Department files show the last objections raised in the three San Joaquin Valley counties came in 1993, with opposition to proposed Hanford annexations, and in 1992, with objections to a Merced County Board of Supervisors' redistricting plan.

While the Justice Department has received more than 120,000 submissions nationwide since 1965, only 37 objections have been raised in the past decade.

The battleground now will be reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, which is scheduled for renewal by 2007. Numerous groups, including the League of Women Voters of California and MALDEF, are actively backing renewal of the law.

When first written, during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 targeted the Southern states that had long used poll taxes and literacy tests to impede minority voting.

"Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote," President Johnson declared during the debate. "Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country, men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes."

The 1965 law specified which states and counties needed federal oversight. Since then, the rules have changed somewhat.

Nine states, mostly Southern, are covered in their entirety, as are counties in seven other states.

The four California counties flunk because less than 50 percent of eligible residents voted in the 1972 presidential election. This was a standard designed to capture states and counties that had erected deliberate voter-registration barriers.

As it happened, though, each of the four affected California counties was home to a large military base, including Lemoore Naval Air Station in Kings County and Castle Air Force Base in Merced County . Local officials say highly transient service members during the Vietnam War drove the voter registration levels down in the 1972 trigger year; it has nothing to do, they say, with entrenched discrimination.

"We've accumulated pretty persuasive evidence," said Bob Naylor, one of the lobbyists retained by the county.

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The Bee's Michael Doyle can be reached at (202) 383-0006 or mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com.

Edition: METRO FINAL
Section: MAIN NEWS
Page: A3

Dateline: WASHINGTON

Record Number: SAC_0405046657