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OCTOBER 6, 2006 
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TO PRESS RELEASES Miller Supports Reauthorization of Voting Rights Act Washington, DC – Today Rep. Brad Miller (NC-13) voted to reauthorize the landmark Voting Rights Act today, in an effort to protect the most fundamental expression of equality in our democracy – the right to vote. The Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Reauthorization Act of 2006 renews for another 25 years the voting rights law that was signed by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965. The reauthorization vote passed by a vote of 390 to 33. “When the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965,” Miller said, “there was not a single African-American in our congressional delegation or even in the North Carolina legislature. The Voting Rights Act has changed North Carolina, the South and the country for the better, and we must never turn back.” Enacted in 1965, expanded in 1975, the Voting Rights Act provided extensive protection to minority communities by prohibiting any voting practice that would abridge the right to vote on the basis of race. Any “test or device” for registering or voting was forbidden, effectively abolishing poll taxes and literacy tests. The act also required the U.S. Department of Justice to clear many states and jurisdictions –including 40 North Carolina counties - before making election changes, such as moving polling locations or drawing new districts. Many conservative Republicans from the South forced a delay on the vote after bemoaning that the bill singled out their states for Justice Department scrutiny without giving them credit for strides on civil rights. . . . |
    
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