Defeated 2018 gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams charged this week that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder opened the door for states such as Georgia to institute policies that have made it harder for people, especially African Americans and Latinos, to vote. Yet it is another Georgian— U.S. Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), the ranking GOP member of the House Judiciary Committee— who outspokenly rejects that accusation.
“The Shelby decision created a new channel for the troubling practice of voter suppression during a time of dramatic demographic change,” Abrams told the House Judiciary subcommittee. Georgia and other states that were once required to run proposed voting changes by the U.S. Justice Department have since “raced to reinstate or create new hurdles to voter registration, ballot access and ballot counting,” she added.
Collins responded by stating that, in Shelby, the Supreme Court only struck down a “single outdated provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.” Significantly, he reminded his colleagues, “the very important provisions of the Voting Rights Act remain in place, including sections 2 and 3.”
Section 4, the provision that was abandoned, put Georgia and certain other states and political subdivisions under the Act’s section 5 “preclearance” requirements. Those “preclearance” requirements prevented voting rule changes in covered jurisdictions from going into effect until the new rules had been reviewed and approved, either following a lawsuit in D.C. District Court or, more often, by the Department of Justice.
Collins then continued:
“When the Voting Rights Act was first enacted, section 4 identified the jurisdictions automatically subject to these special “preclearance” requirements according to a formula. The first part of the formula provided a state or political subdivision would be covered if it maintained on November 1, 1964 a “test or device” restricting the opportunity to register and vote. The second piece provided a state or political subdivision would also be covered if the census director determined less than 50 percent of persons of voting age were registered to vote on November 1, 1964 or less than 50 percent of persons of voting age voted in the November 1964 presidential election.
“In its Shelby County decision, the Supreme Court struck down these automatic preclearance provisions, ruling the original coverage formula was, “based on decades-old data and eradicated practices . . . . In 1965, the States could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics. Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continue[d] to treat it as if it were.” The court further criticized section 4’s formula as relying on “decades-old data relevant to decades-old problems, rather than current data reflecting current needs.”
The congressman from Gainesville also says what Abrams doesn’t say: “Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act also remains in place, authorizing federal courts to impose preclearance requirements on states and political subdivisions that have enacted voting procedures treating people differently based on race in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. If the court finds a state or political subdivision treated people differently based on race, the court has discretion to retain supervisory jurisdiction and impose preclearance requirements on the state or political subdivision, as the court sees fit, until a future date.”
Finally, Collins emphatically rejected Abrams’ repeated claims of “voter suppression” in the state where they both live:
“In my home state of Georgia, voter turnout is expanding mightily. Between 2014 and 2018, turnout among Hispanic and African-American voters has soared, increasing by double digits in a state that more and more Americans are choosing to call home.”
