source http://www.businessinsider.com/project-21s-voting-rights-act-brief-2013-1?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Business%20Insider%20Select&utm_campaign=Business%20Insider%20Select%202013-01-17&utm_content=emailshare
"Myrna Perez, a senior counsel at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, said that changes to the law would be potentially harmful in the wake of controversial attempts at changing voting laws in many parts of the United States in recent years. "(The act) is single-handedly responsible for much of the progress this country has achieved in terms of electoral equality. Changing it would have a tremendous impact. There would be no backstop against states or localities that wanted to conduct discriminatory practises in voting," Perez said.
Last year the federal government used Section 5 to block a highly controversial redistricting plan in Texas which it had feared created extra congressional seats dominated by white voters, when in fact most of the growth of Texas' voter rolls came from minority voters, especially Hispanics.
The League of Women Voters had called the Texas redistricting scheme an "extreme example of racial gerrymandering" aimed at reducing the influence of non-white voters. The plan was blocked by a federal court in August 2012. Myrna said such events showed that the Voting Rights Act was still needed. "That happened just a few months ago last year," she said.
Harley LeBon disagreed, saying that Section 5 was an unfair intrusion by the federal government into the rights of local government to organise their own affairs and that she was happy for black conservatives at Project 21 to spark a debate on such a thorny racial issue. "This is what America is all about: having a discussion. There is a whole network of black conservatives. The Democrats do not have a lock on black support," she said."
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