40 Years After Passage, Voting Law Is in Dispute

Some supporters of the section, however, argue that such litigation is too costly for many aggrieved black and Hispanic voters. "If you have a poor black person or Native American or Latino who wants a Section 2 trial, they have to find lawyers who will do it," Flores said. "You've got to have money to pay for an expert witness to generate research. You tell me what African American can afford a $400-an-hour lawyer and a $200-an-hour expert."

Beyond the theoretical harm, liberal supporters of the measure say efforts to dilute the minority vote by redrawing districts in South Carolina and Texas are a real-life example of why the pre-clearance of rules is still needed. Also, they say, black voters complained of being wrongly identified as felons and crossed off the voting rolls in the 2000 presidential election.

"The right wing does not want to enforce voting rights law," said the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, president of the liberal Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, which is leading the Atlanta demonstration.

Thernstrom and some other critics of the law also say that instead of fulfilling its intended purpose, it is now being used to create misshapen districts that herd minorities into a few areas while leaving adjacent districts overwhelmingly white, an action that has had the effect of helping Republicans.

"Republicans are having a field day with creating districts that bleach out minorities," Thernstrom said.

Congress has used Section 5 to guard against efforts by southern segregationists to scuttle the attempts of black people to vote. Since Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War, southern states have used a variety of means, from poll tax to literacy tests to violent intimidation, to keep black people from casting votes. In some cases, police blotters listed the offense of African Americans who were lynched as "tried to vote."

The fight over the law's language provision, Section 203, isn't as pronounced. It affects small portions of the country, such as the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park, where 5 to 10 percent of the population isn't versed in English.

Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause, recalled going to a senior citizen center there and seeing Chinese immigrants lined up to vote during the presidential election in 1996.

White poll workers didn't understand their Cantonese language, or even the way they pronounced their names. Finally, one worker asked if they could step aside "so that we could first help regular voters," Feng said.

"The law is still needed," she said.