"Not all Latino voters are limited English proficient," said Nina Perales, Southwest Regional Counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, where she directs MALDEF's litigation in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and six other western and southern states. "That is not the whole story for Latino voters."
"Perhaps they see a greater political advantage to these cases," she said, "or they would rather do this than challenge election structures in Section 2 dilution litigation."
Perales is referring to part of the Voting Rights Act prohibiting election practices that discriminate against minorities. She says there are many counties and cities where an expanding Latino electorate has been blocked from electing candidates or achieving majorities because of discriminatory election practices. Those include voting district boundaries that have been redrawn to lessen the impact of Latino voters, or at-large elections that stop minorities from achieving political majorities. The Department of Justice has not filed suits in those instances, Perales said, despite authority to do so.
Moreover, the Voting Section recently has supported harsh voter I.D. laws -- such as in Arizona where registrants must provide proof of citizenship -- that have disqualified tens of thousands of new voters before casting their first ballot. "That's a lot of people who spent time to fill out a voter registration form," she said.
Other experts on Latino voting issues said it was ironic that the Justice Department would be touting its record on enfranchising these voters.
"Despite a very few examples, the Department of Justice has not taken Latino voting rights very seriously," said Matt A. Barreto, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington who writes and teaches on the Voting Rights Act and Latino politics. "The creation of majority-Latino districts have been repeatedly thwarted, racially polarized voting against Latino candidates continues, and Section 203 [lawsuits] related to bilingual materials is not evenly enforced throughout the country."
Barreto said that after the 2000 census, when congressional district boundaries were redrawn, state legislatures could have created "at least five additional seats in the U.S. House that would have been majority-Latino, however the DOJ repeatedly declined to get involved." More recently, in Washington, he said, "we have over a dozen cities in central or east Washington that are 50-60-70 percent Latino, and they have zero Latinos on the city council ... The DOJ has declined to get involved in any of these cases."
When Tanner testifies before the House Judiciary Committee next week, voting rights attorneys hope the committee will look at the big picture concerning the Voting Section's record during the Bush Administration's second term.
"People are wondering why aren't you bring cases with voting and African-Americans -- what is the issue," said Julie Fernandes of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "How can it be that the biggest case involving discrimination in Mississippi [United States v. Ike Brown and Noxubee County] was brought on behalf of white voters ... The law was written to protect black people."
1 | 2
