"Voting Rights Act should be amended"

The Arizona Republic offers this editorial. It ends:

At this point, there's no justification for subjecting the election procedures in Arizona and the other political jurisdictions currently under the preclearance requirement to greater federal scrutiny than those in the rest of the country. Yet supporters of the Voting Rights Act oppose making the preclearance requirement universal or permanent, fearing that would run afoul of the Supreme Court, which from time to time frets about all the race-consciousness in the act.

So, will Arizona's congressional delegation - which consists entirely of Anglo Republican and Latino Democratic politicians who face less electoral competition as a result of race-conscious political boundaries - lead a fight to remove Arizona from this unjustified, unwarranted and discriminatory federal scrutiny of our election procedures?

Don't count on it.

Posted by Rick Hasen at August 24, 2005 07:58 AM