Voting Rights Peril No Longer a Hoax

LOS ANGELES--A few years back former Congressional Black Caucus chair James Clyburn laughingly denounced as a hoax a mysterious e-mail that claimed the Voting Rights Act would be dumped. The e-mail also asserted that blacks would effectively be kicked out en masse from the voting booths. Urban Legends, a popular Web site that specializes in debunking loose-lip gossip and rumors, shoved the Voting Rights scare into its top 25 urban legends. The NAACP was so alarmed that some blacks would actually believe the wild talk about the act's pending scuttle that it quickly issued a statement declaring that African-American voting rights were in no jeopardy.

The Justice Department also jumped into the act and issued a fact sheet that detailed the glories of the Voting Rights Act. Last July, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez in a talk at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library at the University of Texas promised that President Bush would back reauthorization. A month later, on the 40th anniversary of the act's passage, Bush effusively praised it and issued a proclamation declaring the anniversary a "day of celebration." On two occasions afterwards, Bush blithely brushed aside any talk that the act was in trouble and pledged to promptly sign reauthorization. Senate leaders took the cue and in May pledged that they'd speedily reauthorize it.

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