Page 11 - Voting Discrimination News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Just as important as it was then, it continues to be the best defense against voting discrimination that we have today. >> shannon: tom, the authorities out of alabama say, a lot has changed since 1965 when this was passed. the political realities of today are that section 5 shouldn't be a burden on those of us who have gotten our act together, essentially. >> that's right. the united states today is very different from the 1960s and the same holds true of albammasm what is at issue is know the voting rights act as a hold. the at that timeute has play aid key role. but one particular aspect is...

Then gone off and voted together as a kind of a ritual or way to spend that day before the -- two days before an election. he says by blocking that, ending that it was clearly aimed at blacks. bluntly-s there a connection between voting rights section 5 and what reince priebus and his party did last year? >> chris, thanks for having me on the show. it's one we grappled with pretty substantially at the legal defense fund where i am an attorney. what congress did in 2006 when it considered whether to reauthorize the voting rights act was it looked at the whole country and it focused on those are...

Bluntly-s there a connection between voting rights section 5 and what rooens appreciateus and his party did last year? >> chris, thanks for having me on the show. it's one we grappled with pretty substantially at the legal defense fund where i am an attorney. what congress did in 2006 when it considered whether to reauthorize the voting rights act was it looked at the whole country and it focused on those areas where voting discrimination was most concentrated, where it was most intense and most persistent and most adaptive, and it recognized that those jurisdictions that are all or part of 16...

Bad because they've done bad but excluding out other states that have done bad like pennsylvania? >> well, first of all, the voting rights act in general applies to the whole country. so the voting rights act outlaws voting discrimination based on race everywhere. section 5 is a very particular remedy to remedy a particular type and kind of discrimination that we saw most intensely, as ryan said, in the states that are a part of the geographic reach of section 5. so when congress passed the voting rights act in '65, they said okay, we have to stop, we have to give a sword to people to be able ...

Or ohio, states that are not covered by the voting rights act, don't also experience voting discrimination. but what congress recognized very keenly in 2006 is that the type of discrimination that we see in the covered jurisdictions, those jurisdictions covered by section 5 are those places where discrimination is most intense and where congress needed to have the strongest antibiotic to cure the racist discrimination in those covered jurisdictions. >> let me bring this in here. since 2010, not long ago, state legislatures have made it harder to vote in these 17 states, whether by requiring ph...