 okay we're gonna go ahead and get started okay hi everybody welcome to this Texas Public Radio town hall meeting on KSTX 89.1 FM I'm Texas Public Radio's news director David Martin Davies tonight we're turning our attention to the 1965 Voting Rights Act a law that after being passed almost 50 years ago is again controversial we're looking forward to a civil discussion about the topic please no outburst from the from the audience and we are recording this program for broadcast on KSTX and we are being broadcast live on the internet on nowcastsa.com online viewers are invited to participate you can send in questions via Twitter the hashtag is KSTX town hall we also have mics for the audience so they can come up and ask questions and offer comments about the Voting Rights Act so here's a rundown of how things work I'm gonna introduce our five panelists and then we're gonna listen to a radio feature about the history and the present challenges to the Voting Rights Act and then we'll go down the line to get comments from a panelist and we'll open up to the audience so let's get started here's our panelist going from my right left we have Henry Flores he's a professor of political science and the Dean of the Graduate School at St. Mary's University since 1986 Dr. Flores has served as an expert witness and more than 50 federal voting and civil rights lawsuits next to him we have Gilbert Garcia he's a political reporter with 16 years experience reporting throughout the Southwest he's written extensively about the redistricting debate and the voter ID law he currently writes for the online newspaper Plaza de Amos he's recently published the book Reagan's Comeback and here to my right immediately we have state representative Trey Martinez Fisher Martinez Fisher is currently in his sixth term representing District 116 the San Antonio Democrat is also currently chairman of the Mexican-American legislative caucus caucus is one of the most visible opponents to the Republican led legislators congressional district maps and here immediately to my left or better time for you to be on the left George I have George Rodriguez he's the president of the San Antonio Tea Party Rodriguez and the San Antonio Tea Party are a vocal supporters of both the maps drawn by the Republican led legislature and the Texas voter ID law the Tea Party is also critical of the Voting Rights Act and all the way to the end here we have Trey trainer he's an Austin based attorney specializing in election law and government relations a former general counsel to the Texas secretary of state trainer advises numerous elected officials and political organizations on compliance with state and federal election regulations he has been intimately involved in Texas redistricting we also did invite the Texas attorney general Greg Abbott to participate or someone from his office they declined now the voting rights act didn't just pop up in Congress one day in 1965 and get past this landmark civil rights legislation was the culmination of a long struggle we're now going to listen to a report about how the voting rights act came to be on a Sunday March 1965 that about 600 civil rights activists marching for it was on a Sunday March 1965 that about 600 civil rights activists marching for equal access to the ballot box we're heading east out of stoma Alabama on US Highway 80 when they got to the Edmond Pettus Bridge they found a wall of state troopers waiting for the marchers did not disperse and the troopers with their newly deputized recruits charged pushing the peaceful activists back up the street and then to the ground troopers rode in on horseback into the crowd tear gas was fired at the protesters and the authorities began beating the activists with their state-issued batons chasing them back into Selma the confrontation was captured by a national news crew and the images were featured on the nightly network news soon the Reverend Martin Luther King would be in Selma calling for calm but also demanding change with slavery and segregation 345 years we waited a long time for freedom we're trying to remind the nation of the urgency of the moment now is the time to make real the promises of democracy now is the time it was days later that president Lyndon Johnson would cite this atrocity on the Edmond Pettus Bridge when he addressed a joint session of Congress there long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans many were brutally assaulted one good man a man of God was killed there is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma there is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans but there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy and what is happening here tonight he called for a new law to protect voting rights the result was the 1965 Voting Rights Act it gave the federal government the teeth it needed to enforce the 15th Amendment passed in 1870 after the Civil War it prohibited the government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's race or color the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by LBJ on August 6th 1965 there were those who said smaller and more gradual measures should be tried but they had been tried for years and years they had been tried and tried and tried and they had failed and failed and failed and the time for failure is gone there were those who said that this is a many-sided and very complex problem but however viewed the denial of the right to vote is still a deadly wrong and the time for injustice has gone President Johnson you would have a very difficult time getting it through Congress but the bloody events of in Selma, Alabama gave impetus to President Johnson to push congressmen to pass that law. Mark Kaye up to Grove is the director of the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library in Austin. I don't think there is any single law that he passed his prodigious legislative career as president that matches the Voting Rights Act and I would think I would say that he would be most proud of the Voting Rights Act because passing the Voting Rights Act gave African-American people and people of all colors in this in this country a real voice in the electorate and giving them that voice gave them real political power and leverage. Since 1965 the Voting Rights Act has been used by the federal courts and the Justice Department in a number of ways including reviewing redistricting federal judges are looking to see if the new maps are drawn with the intent to sap away minority voting strength and questions are being raised about the current redistricting maps in Texas and that's what's held up our state primaries and the Voting Rights Act is also being used to reject the Texas voter ID law which was passed in the last legislative session and signed by Governor Rick Perry. And this isn't a Democrat or Republican issue I think any person who does not want to see fraud believes in having good open honest elections transparent and one of the ways to do that one of the best ways to do that is to have a identification photo identification so that you prove you are who you are. Perry was recently on Fox News and explained at the state's position in challenging the Voting Rights Act. Here we are in 2012 and the idea that somehow another the southern states and Texas in particular a state that is a majority minority in our public schools now is somehow another being discriminatory towards minorities I think is a vestige of fear tactics that have been used through the years that frankly don't hold water anymore. Opponents of the voter ID law say it discriminates against minorities the U.S. Justice Department found that the law disproportionately disenfranchises registered minority voters. Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver's license or a personal identification card and that disparity is significant. As part of his defense of the voter ID law Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has filed a court challenge to the constitutionality of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. He says it violates state sovereignty the challenge is likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court and what would President Johnson think today of his signature law still being fought against up to Grove says he's sure LBJ wouldn't like it. My guess is that President Johnson would be this consulate over the fact that that the crown jewel of his legislative accomplishments was being challenged by various states throughout the country and he would urge for a reasoned approach to to voting rights as he always said come let us reason together and I think he would want reason to prevail in this case as well. And that's what we're doing here today we're going to reason together about the Voting Rights Act. This is KSTX the town hall meeting on the Voting Rights Act you can follow us on Twitter the hashtag is KSTX town hall now let's turn to our panelists for their take on the present state of the Voting Rights Act and we'll give you about five minutes and we'll begin with Dr. Flutters. How is the Voting Rights Act used in redistricting if we didn't have a Voting Rights Act how would things be different in Texas for minority voters? Well section five of the Voting Rights Act requires several jurisdictions there's seven states and a broad array of other sub jurisdictions townships counties parishes depending on the state you're that you're speaking of that where there has been a finding made to Congress that a history of disgracial discrimination exists in that those particular jurisdictions and section five requires that any of one of those jurisdictions they're called covered jurisdictions because they're covered by the law that any one of the covered jurisdictions when they make or propose a change to any part of their election structure or system or processes or laws must send that change to either the Department of Justice Division of Civil Rights and the Voting Rights section for pre-clearance and that section makes a determination to decide whether or not the change will negatively impact the minority group that's covered by the law in that particular state. The other option is that instead of appealing to the Department of Justice the jurisdiction can send it to the district court of Washington DC and ask for the court to do to make the same sort of recommendation on the proposed change. Without section five the jurisdictions that have a history of racial discrimination could change any kind of election law that they wanted to. They could move polling places arbitrarily discriminatively for instance in early polling places in Bear County a number of years ago the county decided that it was not cost-effective to have the early voting place at the Barbara Jordan Center on the east side of San Antonio because there weren't very many people casting ballots over there during the earlier voting process. Somebody called the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and the attorney for voting rights attorney there called Bear County and says you cannot shut that voting place down because you didn't pre-clear it with the Department of Justice. So even the smallest change the county argued we're going to save money and said saving money is not part of the law. Saving money weighs less in the balance in the balances of justice to the rights of the voters and which must be projected on the law. And so Bear County just you know they kept the polling place open as far as I know it still is open for early voting. So that's just a brief example of one what the law covers and two what it would be like if it didn't. In redistricting any jurisdiction a school district the city of San Antonio the state of Texas has to submit the redistricting plan that occurs that they do every every ten years to DOJ or to the DC court for pre-clearance and they have to look at those districts to see if there's any retrogression involved. In other words any advances made by Hispanics or African Americans or Asian Americans that occur because of the Protection of the Voting Rights Act if that change regresses their position and they go backwards because of that change then it won't be approved. So that section five is really kind of a preventive kind of measure that protects the rights of Latinos and blacks and Asians in the state of Texas. Mr. Garcia Gil Garcia how has the public dialogue changed recently about talking about the voting rights act? It seems that it wasn't that long ago that a politician really wouldn't have openly challenged it. It would there have been some stigma involved and state Republican leaders have charged that Attorney General Eric Holder has extra tough on Texas and enforcing the voting rights act. Have we seen any evidence of that at all? I don't think we've seen that but you know I think this has been building for a while. I mean they're in the early 80s basically section five of the Voting Rights Act was an emergency provision that was included because you know we had the southern states had this history of discrimination and the original idea was that it was going to be in place for five years and then it would come up for renewal and it's been renewed four times since then. And I think when it came up in 1982 for a 25 year extension there was some private questions in the Reagan administration about this. They had some doubts about whether this thing should be extended. So it's been going on but I think the intensity and the volume we've seen it increase in recent years and I think it's fair to have a discussion about the question of whether something that was an emergency provision and a tremendously effective one by the way because when it came into play in 1965 the state of Mississippi had 7% African American voter registration and within two years it was up to 60%. So that was an amazing accomplishment. I think there's a fair debate to be had on whether this is section five is something that we want to have permanently whether this is whether these nine states are going to be subjected to different sets of rules from the other states and I think when it comes to voter ID I think the strongest argument that people have in opposition to section five is to say well we've got a few states who are being scrutinized on voter ID and in other states have voter ID laws and they're not being scrutinized on it. But the thing that stands out to me is that the people who are opposed to section five to continuing it and the people who want to see it go away are generally same people who support voter ID and when they oppose section five the argument that's generally made is this is a remedy for a problem that no longer exists. It's a remedy for a problem that went away that's Texas that's ancient history and Texas has and the southern states no longer have this pattern of discrimination and it seems to me that you could make a very good argument with voter ID that it is a remedy for a problem that has not been proven to exist. We have no solid evidence that there that we have a widespread examples of people going to election sites with someone else's voter registration card and trying to to cast a fraudulent vote and so I think that that the part of the problem is that a lot of time and energy and expense has gone into this voter ID these voter ID laws and the same argument that I think opponents of section five would make could very easily be made against voter ID. Thank you representative Martinez Fisher about the voter ID law. We frequently hear that having a photo ID is needed for cashing a check or even buying Sudafed. Why should voting be held to a lower standard than just you know buying Sudafed and would you support the voter ID law if the state put the necessary resources into a program that would provide photo IDs to anyone who wanted one. That's a really good question. First let me thank you David for bringing us together and like to thank Texas Public Radio for bringing an important issue to the forefront and thank you to Trinity University's Department of Political Science for sponsoring. You know they they say campaign after campaign they're probably saying it's somewhere tonight in Illinois that every vote counts. You hear that all the time that these elections come down to every single vote. Every vote matters and we should get people to vote. I want to tell you a story about a woman named Thelma Mitchell. Thelma Mitchell is 93 years old. She cleaned offices in the state capital of Nashville, Tennessee for 30 years and while she worked in the capital in Nashville, Tennessee for 30 years she had an ID with her picture on it. Thelma cannot use that ID today in the state of Tennessee to vote and because she was born by midwife in 1918 she doesn't have a birth certificate. The state of Tennessee will not provide a means for her to obtain a certificate to prove who she is. It didn't matter for 30 years when she was in and out of members of the House and members of the Senate and the state of Tennessee cleaning their offices, taking out their trash, cleaning up after their mess. Nobody seemed to care that she was who she was when she was sweeping the room but all of a sudden now she cannot vote and the problem is is that buying Sudafed, getting on a plane, buying a pack of cigarettes, those aren't constitutional rights but the right to vote is and while the government certainly has a role in regulating and legislating and coming up with reasonable ways to make sure that you are of age to buy a pack of cigarettes and that you are of age to buy alcohol and that you can buy Sudafed without running a methamphetamine lab but why should the government step in the shoes of censor and decide who gets to enforce their constitutional rights and who doesn't especially in Thelma's instance where she did nothing wrong. She was born at a time where things were very different particularly in the south and there are many people like her and so if every vote truly matters and if it's important and if we mean what we say when we say that then when we legislate these issues we don't create solutions in search of problems. We identify the problem and we fix it. We all know everybody in this room that studies this issue knows that the real fraud in voting may exist with respect to mail-in ballots and how they are applied for and how they are channeled in the postal system and how they're voted and accounted for. This legislation does nothing to even address that issue. Why don't we focus on that and let's take it one piece at a time and if we are going to engage in a debate and discussion about having an ID to do more than getting on a plane let's do it in a way that is fair. Here in San Antonio we have three Department of Public Safety offices. None of them are open after five. None of them are open on weekends. You won't find one downtown and you won't find one west of downtown and so is it fair to the people that live in those communities that they have to miss work if they don't have a driver's license my sense is many of them are not driving and have to travel from far west San Antonio to the southeast side to get a driver's license. I think we can do a better job. This is not the idea this is not the solution. There surely not been a problem and I would care about the rights the constitutional rights of Delma Mitchell before I would chase something that doesn't exist. Mr. Rodriguez as the president of the San Antonio Tea Party you've said that the Voting Rights Act is no longer needed so are you confident that minority voters are not targets for voter suppression by the states and how do you see the Voting Rights Act as a violation of states rights? I see this situation that we're facing in Texas is one where it's not about it's not about race and ethnicity it's about a party. Hispanics just because you're Hispanic does not mean that you're a Democrat and Democrats have even criticized Henry Cuellar for negotiating with the Attorney General they were upset that they're more upset about party losses than they are about the Hispanic political diversity. The fact of the matter is that there is Hispanic political diversity and probably someone like myself who is a conservative and bilingual and bicultural is probably one of the nightmares for some of these folks. The Democrats shouldn't blame should not blame racism at this point they should be blaming the fact that they don't that they have a race-based message that can't attract a diversity of voters and so therefore they can't win certain elections. Naleo has has done a extensive research and the figures show that there are more than over a hundred local Hispanics Hispanic elected officials in the in the state of Texas so I have to ask myself where where is the this discrimination that's that's prevalent and awful that that's going on right now the fact of the matter is that there is political diversity in the Hispanic community now there are Hispanic Republicans there are Hispanic conservatives there's even Hispanic tea party members so the issue is not that we should continue punishing a state for the sins of individuals 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago and that it's time to move on at which at what time do you does it quit being a tattnanny state that you handle and coddle and push along at what point do people stop pretending that that racism is like the boogeyman to scare people to come to vote it's really really time to stop it the other issue is that we can see it very very clearly when when individuals when Hispanics are marrying intermarrying with Anglos and with African Americans at a high rate well it's called integration folks it's called integration and that should be something that we should be happy with we should not be balkanizing America any further I do oppose it and I feel that it is really really a problem this is at this long addressed a problem in the past but to continue pushing it and to continue supporting it at this point I think it's really really all it is is discriminating against the state of Texas and discriminating against Americans just because they are not a certain ethnicity or race you are discriminating against them and that's the bottom line Mr. trainer you've been on the inside in Austin during redistricting conferences there there's nothing wrong with redistricting to benefit one party over another but how do you guard against drawing lines that hurt minority dominated communities well I think when you when you look at the voting rights act in the context of redistricting and and we've started this entire conversation off talking about race but if you read the voting rights act it's actually written as a race neutral piece of legislation it has no one particular race in mind and what has happened is as time has gone on it's been the politicization of the voting rights act that's caused the problems and now leads to the call to do away with the voting rights act and so sitting on the inside drawing maps in a redistricting process while Dr. King in the clip that we just heard talked about the fact and and often spoke about the fact that we should achieve a colorblind society the first thing that happens in the redistricting process is that you go through and you identify what our majority majority districts you go through and identify the hispanic districts you go through and identify the black districts and you see what the benchmark is for those and you make sure that you hit those benchmarks again so if you have an increase in population in the hispanic community like we've seen in state of texas the voting rights act actually forces us to pack them into districts to achieve the same numbers that are under old census lines instead of looking at and saying what are the real communities of interest here how many representatives do these particular areas need what are the important issues for the state that need to be addressed and those are the things that should be taken into consideration more importantly than race but because of the voting rights act the very first question that's asked is let's look at race and i don't think that's what the intent of Dr. King and the marchers in Selma was was to say let's look at race first i think what they were trying to march for and what the civil rights movement was about was let's all be equal and let's all be on a level playing field and while the voting rights act in particularly section five attempted to achieve that early on i think we've outlived its usefulness because it's now become a political tool and i think you can see that in a lot of different cases most notably i think you can see it in philadelphia when the new black panther party has two men dressed in all black with black braids on holding batons outside of a polling location denying people the right to go in and vote and the justice department comes in and says that's wrong and we're going to prosecute them for it under the bush administration and as soon as the obama administration comes in they drop the case or when you have places like noxby county mississippi where ike brown ran an entire operation that had that revolved around mail-in ballot fraud and the justice department goes in several times investigates and they never find anything wrong until finally the attorney general of the state of mississippi decides to prosecute ike brown and he pleads guilty same thing happens in hail county and perry county alabama where again justice department sent in voters sent in observers over and over again never found anything wrong they had a change in administration in alabama the alabama attorney general prosecute you have three people who confess uh and plead guilty and then of course you have the case in georgia of johnson versus miller where the federal district court actually chastises the justice department for actually colluding with plaintiffs in the case to affect a political outcome and that's what section five of the voting rights act is turned into it's turned into a political tool and that's why it needs to be done away with okay we're going to open this up now to the audience if you have questions or comments we invite you to step up to the microphone and and bring your questions up i have a question that we received through the email and i'll bring it up right now recently when i applied for a passport my texas birth certificate was rejected because it was an abstract and not a certified copy as required by the state department i applied online to the texas department of state health service for a long form birth certificate as part of the process they required that i have my texas driver's license to prove where i was there were problems since i have a texas driver's license but what if i didn't have a texas driver's license does that mean i can't get a certified copy of my birth certificate more to the point how could i get a texas driver's license or id to satisfy the texas voter id law without a certified copy of my birth certificate that i can't get without a driver's license so it's sort of a catch 22 there for people trying to prove who they are and so i will kick that to you and mr trainer about how that worked this should become a barrier to people who want to exercise their right to vote well senate bill 14 has provisions and in the voter id law that's at issue has provisions in it for free identifications to be provided and they're not driver's license if you show up and say i need an idea picture id issued by the department to vote they'll give you an id and that and that's in the law and the reason it's in the law is because that was what was required in order to to meet the muster that the supreme court set forth in the indiana the first case to make it to the supreme court the indiana voter id law was challenged and there and more importantly when georgia a the only state that's had the issue litigated before the supreme court and the only section five covered jurisdiction there the georgia legislation when it went up the first time did not have the provision of free identification in it the supreme court found that to be a a poll tax so the inclusion of a free id actually eliminates all of the concerns about whether or not someone can or can't get is as long as you go in and hold out that you're using the id for voting you have to be given the id and i think it's important to remember when we talk about voter id and we often hear this red herring of well there's a concern about mail in voter fraud and that's where the real problem is well federal law already requires that for the very first time that you vote by mail you actually have to include a copy of a photo identification with your registration to receive the ballot the first time that you vote by mail and so actually federal law has a requirement in place that takes care of a lot of the identification requirements going forward now we can't obviously for people who were grandfathered on the rolls to receive mail-in ballots they're going to continue to receive representative martinis fischer i mean how does it look from your event your other eye well i think from the beginning and it really i don't think i mean there's obviously this issue of how democrats and republicans feel about it but let's just look at it from the voters perspective the state of texas declared winners and losers when they decided what forms of ids they would accept in which forms they wouldn't and so it's perfectly acceptable to vote with a concealed handgun license i you know i'm curious how many people have them i i have one and i'm sure a few of you in the crowd do too but not everyone does but you cannot use a state issued id for state employees that are issued by dps the same state agency that will be issuing out these free identifications to go and vote uh we can use our driver's license or military id but we cannot use a college id you know we we seem to forget that when we apply a register to vote we have to identify ourselves by our social security and our driver's license number when those are screened at the secretary state's office they look for matches and mismatches and if there is a mismatch guess what when you go to vote guess what you have to produce an id and so we have a pretty sophisticated system already and what we have in this law now is a series of setups to where if you show up and you vote a provisional ballot the law says you have to come back and prove who you are within a couple of days or your votes not going to count uh how many of you have stood in line to go vote once and how many of you are willing to go back a second time after you voted and what i think is that when we talk about this in the abstract in the 30 000 foot view it sounds really nice and rosy but when we take it down to the to the individual level and you look at somebody like my mother i use my mother all the time because she was my campaign manager she was a precinct chair and she's been voting in glenn hoax elementary ever since it's been an elementary school my mother has parkinsons so she doesn't have a driver's license and with parkinsons she's definitely not going to go out and get a concealed handgun license and she's not doing a lot of traveling these days so she doesn't have a passport but she's been voting in glenn hoax elementary since it opened and was a voting site what do we do for people like her when she wants to vote how do we tell her that it's okay your vote is counted all of your life but all of a sudden because we've changed directions because of this illusion of a problem we're going to make it problematic for you is it fair to my mom it shouldn't it certainly isn't is it fair for people like my mom it certainly isn't was it even discussed in the formation of the legislation absolutely not the reason why these ids are free is because it was challenged on the floor of the house because it was determined that when the state would give out a free id lo and behold our structure of government has decided that we are going to put highways on a credit card and pay it with bonds and use money to service those bonds and pay the debt service well guess what when you start giving away free ids that are being counted on to make payments for road projects you've all of a sudden violated several bond covenants with the companies that have lent you and businesses that have lent you this money to build these roads all of a sudden you have a big problem and so texas didn't fix this for the sake of accommodating the voters they fixed this because they knew they had a violation of their public finance their public debt agreements with people who build roads and toll roads and things like that that's why it was fixed and I can tell you that because I was in the debate and so there are some advantage of being on the inside as this goes forward to the Department of Justice I mean they will I immediately recognize that there are many people who are in this state that don't have ids don't have a pathway to get it and there is no flexibility within the system to allow these people the ability to go out and vote we have said let's make voting fraud and voting voter impersonation let's make it a felony to send people to jail throw them under the jail but let's make it easy for everybody who wants to vote rejected very quickly on party lines okay we have some participants you have a question sir yes sir my name is Randy bear I'm just a member of the community I appreciate Dr. Floors and Gilbert explaining section five and why it was there it was essentially and what I've heard it referred to is it's a speed bump in those states that had past history and I understand about the past history aspect but I have we have to go to the current day and the interesting part I have to do is have to kind of go back to our trade trainer here on this I look at CD26 which the history on that is the Tarrant County and it's Denton County and the original map drawn by the by the the past legislature had when you mentioned communities of interest it was very interesting to see this finger of a district that extended into Tarrant County but had all of Denton County and so it's hard to see the community of interest there first of all whenever the prior districts were really Fort Worth so the legislature passed that without pre-clearance that that particular district would have been enacted with pre-clearance it stopped it and basically had a review and AG Abbott basically conceded and the new district actually looks better it has just a small part of the north of Tarrant County so I have to ask you a question on this when you talk about communities of interest and you talk about this no need for this thing how do you reconcile that with the fact that we had a legislature that actually put a district in like that and actually we found out that that was not a good district so that's where I met with them well first of all I would challenge whether or not we had found out that it's a good district or not what we have in place now is an interim map the the case is still ongoing before the district court and the district of Columbia that'll make determinations as to whether or not there was any type of discriminatory intent involved the the process of redistricting and the outcome of the way these districts looks a lot of times there's a function of geography and it's a function of the requirement of the Constitution to have exactly equal population particularly with regard to congressional districts like you mentioned so when you have to have the exact number of people with no deviation whatsoever you're going to end up with odd districts otherwise we'd be able to take whole counties and put them together and we'd have deviations a lot like the lines in the house maps that look a lot cleaner so it makes it very difficult when you have to when you when you have to and of course we all want to comply with the 14th amendment and make sure that everybody has one person one vote as the standard but it it forces those type of of draws of districts where you end up with odd configurations and of course that happens throughout the map where you have little portions of counties and little portions of cities that get severed off to meet federal constitutional requirements and i do want to remind our listeners that this is the Texas public radio town hall meeting on the voting rights act and and gill jess open you wanted to say yeah i mean i think that if we look at the history of the state i mean there is gerrymandering has always occurred i mean we democrats were in power for a long time and that has occurred there and republicans have been in power more recently and it's occurred and but you know the the bigger issue is is there you know the the intent to discriminate long racial or ethnic lines and i think that the argument that greg abbot makes is that that the you know section five has done its job and we've we've elected you know african-american and latino elected elected officials over the last 40 some years and that we've we've we're past that but i think that the the deeper question is do we still need it as a deterrent i mean have we have we achieve this and is it no longer necessary is it have we have we have we change so much that that there's no need for it anymore or are we is there that need for that deterrent to continue to to make sure that the state continues to follow those guidelines and dr yeah just to to to expand on on what gilbert was saying is and and to comment on a little bit on on mr redriguez's comment about naleo's showing the increase in in latino elected officials naleo will actually tell you that the that the increase of of latino officials over the last and they keep track every year i get a directory of every latino elected and a pointed official in every state of the union from arturo vargas he says put my compliments dr flotis again so i keep him so i've got this long database of going back i don't know how many years of their data and it's a very clear line it shows his increase but he'll be the first one to tell you and they've done research in the leo to say show this that there's a direct result of this this increase a direct result of the imposition of the voting rights act and particularly section five so it works to increase representation for one now the the whole issue about fraud is very interesting if you go and i invite you to google whenever you get home or whatever google the brendan center for for justice and look at the research that they've conducted on fraud electoral fraud and and the three states that they've that they've looked at they've found the incidents is ranging from two ten thousands of one percent to four ten thousands of one percent occurrences of voter fraud this whole issue about voter fraud is a red herring you know and i invite anybody who who claims that that that uh the voter id laws or any other kind of provisions they want to put in place is to prevent voter fraud to come up with a research to show how much voter fraud really is going on because i'll venture to say that there's there's not as much as people are made made to think there is okay we have another question from the floor uh hello i'm matthew sharden a senior at the school of science technology and um i wanted to address a question to everybody but i wanted to comment on mr. Rodriguez's assessment about what racism i agree that there is tons of diversity in the latino culture and we do have people that vote both conservative and liberal on issues but i'd like to say that there are correlational studies that show that more Hispanic people tend to vote democratic and i would think that in a legislation that can look at that when drawing lines they would know they could use that to an advantage to either gary mandor or put an advantage for them in re-election so my main question is why do we have the people who are responsible or why do we have the people who are getting elected to power draw the lines that are going to determine you know who votes for them and put some in power why don't we have some other organization or maybe some national organization do this or go to a pr system okay so he was addressing you mr. Rodriguez you want to respond it seems to me that what you're asking is why not have a commission or a bureaucracy that would establish it with some states have yeah and that's fine that's fine but i i oppose that i think that that that runs contrary to what the the ideals of the constitution and the founding fathers so therefore you know i don't think that that's that's something that we want to we want to do the idea is that a political party wins the votes based on what they are preaching promoting etc etc and you know from my point of view that would be a disaster that would be a disaster now but can you elaborate what's a disaster a disaster a disaster is when people claim that they don't have excuse me um it is when people claim that there is no need for voter identification and there is when people claim that that there there is no research and the research being done is being done by people who promote the idea of no of no the no need for for voter registration i think that that's that's that's the headache that i see and what we've got right now is a situation where again i insist that this is a political situation this is not an issue related to race or ethnicity this is a political situation where democrats are upset that they have lost and the reason that they have lost it's their own fault it's not it's not anybody it's not anybody else's i mean they have they have painted themselves into a corner in the message that they that they put forth and i am very very proud and happy that the tea parties had something to do with promoting and pushing the the the victories of so many republicans a republican majority into the state senate and into the state house for the first time in a long time and thus um you know it was the vote it was voters that said this is what we want and now for the for the justice department or for the losing party to try to reverse that and try to say no that's not fair what's not fair okay okay i i think it's important to you know when you consider looking at whether or not you have a commission or some other mechanism in place you know the texas constitution guarantees a republican form of government uh and that's the in the federal constitution assigns the redistricting uh obligation to the legislature now the legislature can change that anytime they want to but it you know i think importantly i think it would take a vote of the citizens of the state of texas to change the constitution to take that authority away from the legislature to do it and if you think it's going to be any better i mean you need you need to look any further than arizona to see what happened just recently with their adoption of a commission uh and the back and forth i mean the commission can be just as partisan uh as the legislature can be and in some instances it can be more partisan at least when the legislature meets they meet in public they have an open public debate representative martinez fischer gets to express his views the press is there covers everything it's very possible for a small commission of five six eight people however many put on there to to collude together at any time and then come out and have a public vote so i think it's it's a much more fair process when you have open public committee meetings i know in 2003 i mean there were bus loads of people during the congressional redistricting who were coming in from all over the state to address the the committee the legislature has the resources they went out and had hearings all over the state for that so you know i think there's much more public input into the process when you have the legislature involved and uh senate republican senator jeff went with the san antonio has been pushing a plan that would create some sort of committee that would uh change the way things are done sort of like what this young man has suggested now representative fischer you wanted to jump in i think that uh george intrigued me here that i mean we we try to position this that this is just a fight between republicans and democrats and i get that that's easy that's easy to sell that's easy for people to understand because republicans and democrats are always going at it but let's just look at the facts in the context of the voting rights act we're talking about a state that over the course of a decade grew by 4.2 million people in 10 years that is huge 3.7 million of those people were minority and 2.7 million of those people were latino and when you look at this through the lenses of race and not politics you will see what was the result of texas growing so fast in congress that meant four new seats the last time that happened in the state of texas it was the 1860s it was after the civil war it was in during reconstruction probably won't happen again in my lifetime may not happen in my daughter's lifetime this is significant we grew four new seats because of that growth and let's look at the scoreboard when the legislature finished that that robust growth that we talked about resulted in zero net gains for minorities in congress in minus six seats in the texas house how is that about politics that's about race and there's clearly an issue of people who try to mass themselves with race to get into the voting rights act litigation because that's the only way they can save their political skins but there are true litigation teams out there that are looking at this through the lenses of minority groups the NAACP, MALDEF, our caucus we are the Mexican-American legislative caucus and we are mostly comprised of democrats and so it would surprise people to know that one of the biggest positions that we advance that we have not given up on is the creation of a state rep district in west Texas that Barack Obama received 29 percent of the vote now tell me that that's about politics we can elect a Latino republican in west texas in the communities of Lubbock Midland and Odessa that president obama received 29 percent of the vote has nothing to do with politics has everything to do with race and so that is a big that is a significant point and when you go to these commissions it's important to understand that how you structure it is everything what trade was referring to in Arizona they created a commission and then governor brewer of Arizona called a special session so that she could impeach the head of the commission because she didn't think that the head of the commission was doing a good job and guess who funds the commission the state of Arizona the revenues are derived from the legislature in Arizona so if they control the purse strings and they can control who's in and who's out how independent is it and Jeff Wentworth's proposal is a great idea and i've talked to people about it publicly but it says if nothing gets done by august 31st of redistricting year then they do no more and then you go back to where we started which is the courts and so i think the voting rights act is a no it is a impressive piece of legislation it should serve as as both a sword and a shield and states should know that what happened in the state like texas if it can be done in the state like a state of texas and have no voter rights pre-clearance issues or litigation issues protections from the court then there is nothing that can be stopped when it comes to states making decisions to put race aside and to expand political power on the backs of minority communities and that's simply not what we can have happened in the 21st century well um some people on the conservative side of the argument would say that's a scare tactic that you're saying if we lose the voting rights act that it would be off to the races in the in the sense of taking away minority opportunities to to vote and i would say that if it's a scare tactic i mean it's the truth i mean since 1970 texas has been a covered jurisdiction since 1970 legislators in washington i believe senator benson and barbara jordan asked for texas to be included in the list of covered jurisdictions and ever since 1970 texas has received an objection from the department of justice happened in the 70s democrats were in control happened in the 80s democrats were in control happened in the 90s democrats were in control happened in 2000 republicans are in control it happened in two well it is it has not happened in 2010 yet that is being litigated but we know that the department of justice has issued a an objection in their complaint that's currently before the district court before the district of columbia so the statistics aren't on the side of people who say it's a scare tactic i think that the texas have been pretty consistent on being on the other side of the voting rights act since 1970 dr flutters um we've heard the accusation or being brought up the characterization that the democrats have a race based message and we're talking about race versus politics and is there a a strategy behind uh if if someone wanted to limit democratic votes that they would suppress mexican americans from getting to do to the ballot box to do that you know i i've been involved in three rounds of redistricting as an as an expert witness um and in the 1991 round i worked for the republican party and 2000 uh 2003 round it was it was for uh maldeaf and um this this round i worked uh i'm part of the reason that we're having late elections i i apologize to the public but i was i was one of the testifying experts and and and this this uh peri via uh pedis or pedis or peri um texas redistricting round my job is to identify racial intent in redistricting how can you how can you show that race is is the principal variable in the redistricting process that that race is being used yeah um one of the things i did find working for i worked for for maldeaf in these last two rounds maldeaf is non partisan um so that the the chief the chief attorney will tell you and i will tell you that maldeaf doesn't really care whether republicans or democrats get elected to office the important things that latinos get elected to office if they're republican latino that's fine democratic latino that's fine too but it's latinos and um one of the things that that that i discovered uh was that um uh in the areas of of high population growth in the state is in the latino community where the latino community is the most dense and there were no congressional districts drawn in those areas latino communities were either chopped up or packed in other areas and uh because the the the redistrictors which were republican attorneys working for the attorney general's office and and and the text legislative um legislative council telling the text legislative council what to do working for the speaker's office uh i have copies of all their memos and emails and everything because i had to use those that was evidence in the court law it was very clearly that they were manipulating the hispanic population to draw districts the way they wanted them to come out which were meant white republican uh politicians would get elected to office it was very simple it was very very i i did this nice little table for a judge to show that in one congressional district 23 that had grown to um 149,000 more population so they had to pair out 149,000 people the redistrictors manipulated over 600,000 people just to get the right 149,000 moved out and the way they did it was they moved out those latino district precincts around the periphery in the edge of the congressional district that turned out in large numbers that would not vote because they were thinking all latinos are democrats so if we leave those precincts in they're going to elect a democrat to that congressional district they moved them out and brought in other precincts that were low performing latino precincts because they knew that the white anglo quote-unquote republicans would out vote the low performing latinos and those precincts was race being used to manipulate the lines on a congressional district absolutely absolutely was the republican redistrictors thinking that all republicans are anglos and all latinos are democrats absolutely that's the way they were thinking they were thinking this political party was superimposed on race but race was really the thing that was being was driving the line drawing but let me ask you isn't 23rd congressional district that's kiko kenseko right that's correct now he's a latino that's correct and maldev challenged that that's correct you said that maldev doesn't care if they elect republicans or democrats as long as they're hispanic that's correct so what happened there uh congressman kenseko if you look at the research on his election campaign he was elected by anglo voters the latino voters in that congressional district didn't turn out it by america well that's true that's very true mr riggs they're all americans about whether the latinos are anglos but in his case they were anglo american republican voters that came out in large amounts thank goodness to tea party organizing over there i think y'all did a wonderful job but they did not talk to the latino community and they didn't turn out to vote and that's what happened um matter of fact cedar Rodriguez got got criticized for uh running a poor campaign and not turning out his vote uh or else he he could have probably um beat beaten kenseko in that district but in that case it was a very very clear if you look at it kenseko was a preference of the anglo voters and Rodriguez was a preference of the latino voters in that particular congressional district okay mr. Rodriguez go ahead first of all i'm i'm flabbergasted that he makes the comment that maldev is is not partisan um i know some of the maldev people personally now to be fair the tea party you're nonpartisan we are nonpartisan but we are conservative we are very conservative but we are very conservative and the issue here is not is not necessarily just democrat and it's and republican it is liberal and conservative and the issue again is that you know there's a there's an old saying in spanish you try to tapar el sol con un dedo you try to hide the sun with with your finger the fact of the matter is again clearly in kiko kenseko's example folks he was elected whether it was by anglos or hispanics he was elected and what is wrong with that what is wrong with that i don't understand how you can punish a state for the behavior of some people 50 60 years ago and to keep raising that red heron and yes it is it's a red herring to keep raising it constantly because it's advantageous politically to you and economically i mean not only i feel very very strongly i mean i worked with with uh with uh senator hatch back in back in the 1980s and during the reagan administration to get rid of affirmative action because i think that that is symptomatic of a bigger problem that of the problem that we've got the balkanization of americans and it is very very sad when you start looking at issues well they were that hispanic was not elected by uh by by hispanics so therefore we got a challenge i mean are you hearing yourselves i just i'm flabbergasted let's go back to the participants yeah juan gutierrez community activists um i kind of see the the voting rights acts it's almost like a checks and balance not just for republicans but also for democrats but i have issues when you start uh doing this grand thing that you're giving the free id and everything yet and correct me if i'm wrong it's supposed to be gone through the dps yet soon after that that would became one of the things to that could be done by the state or through an attorney general's office they all of a sudden shut down 40 offices dps offices and i think a lot of them were in rural communities of latino communities and now from what i understand there's another 40 additional stations dps stations fixing to be closed too and but now they're supposedly they're looking to see they're see what the targets are going to be i think it's the word they use but that seems a good reason for me to have the voting rights act thank you well pass us along with first i want to remind our listeners that this is the kstx texas public radio town hall meeting and we're talking about the voting rights act gill you wanted to take that you know when to get back to it an earlier point you know i i think we have to be careful about this idea that you know the party that is not in power that it's it's sour grapes and that their message hasn't been effective and i'm not not to suggest that this does not happen at times but i think if you look back historically you know in the mid 1960s in texas 180 of the 181 people in the state legislature were democrats now if you had said to the republicans at that time you know nobody likes your message it's just it's not getting through so just you just got to deal with it and you know that's the fault is with you well it wasn't as simple as that because we had at at large districts in this state and the system was set up to make it difficult for republicans to get elected and the voting rights act actually initially was very beneficial to the republican party for quite a long time and and trade was pointing out in the 70s 80s and 90s you know that when democrats were in power it actually it was a safeguard for the republican party in a sense so i i think that we have to look at the situation as as not simply you know this one party is their message is failing and and that's that's what it's all about because the system can be set up and and it was it was actually set up in a way to prevent republicans from having power for a long time in the state David if i could just to the point about the closing of the 40 dps offices it what that means is that texas still has more driver's license offices than any other state i mean texas is a very large personally i mean texas is a very large state and and obviously we face some some budgetary challenges those offices you know i don't think anybody in the legislature thought well we're closing these offices with the intent of keeping people from being able to vote and so again i i think it's it's it's this it's this colorization of emotion over the common sense aspects of of what we have here and to the point earlier about you know the exchange of emails i think that's directly on point with what i said earlier it forces people in the legislature this particularly section five of the voting rights act forces the legislature to look at race first and to look at at where and how we're going to effectuate race and it's this again this politicization of the act that takes place i mean when you have the the u.s justice department objecting to kinston north carolina moving from partisan city council elections to nonpartisan the citizens of the city voted and said we want to go to nonpartisan elections and the justice department entered an objection and said wait wait wait you can't do that how are we going to be able to identify who the republicans and democrats are and they objected so kinston goes and they they file suit in the in the district court in district columbia and all of a sudden the justice department decides well maybe we'll reconsider that and that's fine well the reason why they did that is because they knew that they were putting section five of the voting rights act on the fast track to be struck down as unconstitutional because you can't say that when the citizens of a community decide they want to have nonpartisan elections and you can't say well you can't identify who the republican and democrat is that you're not actually politicizing the voting rights act and more importantly when we look at the vote i mean the real problem with the voting rights act and what we've talked about here tonight is really section five it's the pre-clearance requirement it's whether or not the state of texas and really only a few states not all states a few states have to go get permission from the federal government to take action now if every if it was an application to all states that may change the nature of what this debate is but it's not but section two of the voting rights act which really does protect minority communities and gives them an opportunity to go to court and to challenge actions that are truly egregious you know we haven't heard any discussion of section two but because section two works just fine it's section five that's become the political tool mr trainer thank you very much for that and mr martinez 30 seconds i think you know there's a lot of inside baseball and redistricting and and what dr floaters was referring to when he said these emails there was evidence uh that was emails exchanged by folks who were drawing these lines and when trace says well you know you can tell from these emails that people are looking at race well i want to be clear these emails were looking at race they weren't looking at using race to protect minorities they were looking at race to destroy communities and you will see email after email to say well what do we need to do in this area that we can give the illusion of a hispanic majority seat but we know because we can look at election data that these minorities are not voting and so on the surface it looks like it's a 50 plus hispanic district but we know it really isn't because they don't vote and so the minorities will never have the opportunity if they even came together on their best day they wouldn't elect a candidate of their choice i want to be very very clear about that and there are there are dozens of emails that speak to that and secondly i i don't think anyone thought including the colonel of the department of public safety that he was going to be in the business of issuing ids for people to go out and vote we know that we could do this with same day registration right at the precinct poll as it takes place if you have a good idea and if all you need that's all you need to vote well then why can't we use that to register people same day and let them vote in the primary in the general election the fact of the matter is i want my state troopers out there defending our states and protecting us from drug dealers and drug traffickers and human traffickers and all the bad things that they ought to be protecting us from not going around putting people behind the desk to make you prove who you are in order for you to vote in your general or your primary election i think we have our priorities backwards and i think the department will be the first one to tell you that they are not equipped to handle what's to come with voter id and they'd rather have someone else do it and that's why we said let's be commonsensical like trice suggested let's exempt the military let's exempt veterans let's exempt seniors that have been doing this for a very long time let's let the county decide if this is the best direction for a county to go let's have local control that is a big talking point and lots of political circles to have local control let the local county decide if this is something that they want to do in their county let's give them that control that choice all those things rejected this wasn't about coming up with a common sense solution this was about how are we going to make something very difficult and we're going to pass it we're just going to stick together and we'll vote it down 99 to 45 you know every time there's an amendment and that's exactly what happened let's go back to the floor yes ma'am i'm obliged to speak just because there's no women on your panel tonight my name is tanya gila gardenio and i'm here as an individual not as pertaining to any political party just from community and i just wanted to know the um i guess my question is about the guidelines of the supreme court issued uh to our three judge panels here in texas and how what do you all feel that um basically i guess how it redefines um the continuation of the voting rights act in terms of coalition districts you want to take that mr flood i'm i'm happy to okay mr trainer i think i think they were very clear uh that the that this concept of coalition districts of this concept that that's been attempted to be litigated by uh it was you know it was attempted in lulac versus perian again it's been attempted here in the parez litigation it's been attempted uh in several other pieces of litigation that you can put these coalitions of minorities together and somehow or another they're protected um the the jurisprudence of the voting rights act makes it very clear that you have to have a majority of a particular minority group in place and i and i think the the peri versus pres decision mentions that specifically that this you know if the court there was attempting to create a coalition district one it can't do it and two it didn't have any justification if that's what they were trying to do and they mentioned that specifically with regard to the initial congressional district 33 that was drawn uh so you know i i think we're coming to the end of uh this attempt to create coalition districts and we and we're now moving more towards the the traditional going through the the various factors of there's some case law it's called the jingle's factors as to whether or not there's cohesive voting among a minority community and whether they're compact enough to constitute being created into a district so i think i think what at the end of this litigation i think what we'll see is a very firm determination that coalition districts don't have to be drawn and aren't a necessity for a for a covered jurisdiction yes ma'am hello my name is um kamala plat usually when i get up to ask a question it's because i'm i'm like really inspired about something wonderful that i feel like's happening but today i'm confused and i guess the confusion maybe you can help me out i came because i saw the i heard on the radio this is going to be about the voting rights act and and that's a federal as my understanding i'm not a legal scholar but my understanding is that that's a federal act that that we as states participate under and what i'm hearing is people from a particular state who for whatever reasons are calling it things like red herring and unconstitutional without having legitimate reasons for doing that and i feel like you know i i have family and extended family that marched for that that that suffered and were in prison and and you know i know people that lost their lives in this struggle to have this and make this a better country and i don't understand why i mean how we can have um i'm not saying that you know everyone has a right to say and feel whatever they they like but i don't feel like i mean this is i trusted the public radio station i trust trinity university i don't feel like this is up to our standards for what um we should be discussing in terms of this it is a difficult issue in terms of the redistricting and all of that but i'd like to ask if we can somehow raise the level of the discussion and and really bring it up to what the voting rights act demands of us thank you mr dr flutters yeah i'd like to comment on that you know as you saw from the program i've testified on a lot of different cases and one of the things i've told the lawyers over the years is that what's missing in these cases what's very very sad about these cases is that the human stories of the sacrifice and the pain that people who who have had injustices brought against them uh because that have given rise to these lawsuits um don't get into the court record these trials boil down to a bunch of technicians and academics and statisticians talking about all kinds of line drawing and software packages this that and the other but they don't talk about um for instance um they don't talk about um the um the beatings that go on in some rural communities because uh a latino boy decided to to date an anglo girl and his brothers found out about it and they dragged him out and so forth because but but that's one line drawn in that community that you can't not cross that's part of the evidence that i testified to you i dig up stuff like that and i presented in the courtroom but the people involved uh the the the the i i've worked in philadelphia mississippi and those you are old enough to understand the history of voting rights act and know the name of that town know what a horrible nightmare and secret those people uh have to live with um the the the the the psychology in that community the environment in that community is so depressive to this day they've got a collective guilty conscience for the murders that occurred in that community because of the voting rights act and those stories just don't make it into into into the trials instead it's a bunch of lawyers and a bunch of suits and a bunch of phd's talking about stuff that don't count and and this this woman i i did i missed her name is very true we need to raise this this discussion to a higher level this is a law that protects the constitutional right of a group of people or groups of people who have been denied the right to participate in a democracy been denied denied the right to participate in a democracy because of their color or the language that they speak these laws section five is a is a law that forces the state to obey the constitution of the united states fundamentally period that's it that's really what we need to be talking about but we do get bogged down technically anyway i just needed to make that statement david and i do want to point out that we did begin the discussion uh by you know bringing up and hearing the what happened at the edmund pettus bridge outside of selma and trying to draw a big bold line back to that event and showing that this is about people um it's not just about abstract numbers mr trainer you wanted to weigh in sure you know i think what but doctor floris has pointed out is that a court of law justice can be blind a lot of times in fact we want it to be section five is a complete distortion of the regular course of business in a lawsuit it requires the state to prove that you weren't racist in what you did it's not that evidence is put on that you did do something that's wrong it's that you have to go and improve that you didn't do something wrong and so it completely changes the course of our jurisprudence uh and how and how we've always faced legal cases in this country uh and and that's what happens there and yes i i will admit that there are a lot of times that personal stories you know i mean when you're dealing with the entire state of texas 254 counties the millions of people in the population moves in the very short period of time we could address issue we could address all the individual issues that we wanted if we didn't have to have a primary election in may you know we could spend hours upon hours hearing testimony of folks but you can't do that at some point at some point you have to get down to the what the districts are going to look like where people are going to go vote you know we're all as an attorney i'm always thankful to have people like dr floris to come and testify and to speak to various issues that we need expert testimony on but at the end of the day you've got to get down and you got to have the elections let's go back to the floor yes sir my name is rafia williams i am a citizen of the east side of san antonio texas and i am amazed at the framing of this debate in terms of conservative and liberal and democrat and republican i'm amazed that a conservative would use and always does use dr martin luther king as a platform to discriminate against the very people that he supported i'm amazed that they would be constitutionalist when the constitution was not built for women or minorities or people of color and that you say that it's a red herring you say that there's no need um to discuss race because we're in the post obama racial racialist society but if what dr floris says is that three out of the four million people who grew here in the state of texas should not equate out to three out of four districts being represented by the people who are responsible for that growth explain to me how you think that that's not fair and explain to me how you think that there is no history currently when the biggest the biggest stories of the news of the past week are of a sexist man saying something about women and an institution a status quo a conservative status quo institution not recognizing or acting on the beating and kill i'm sorry the killing the murder of a young man that's the reason why there is a voting rights act how do you not see that that's the reason for there not being a voting rights act mr rogers you want to take that first of all let me let me say that um i am not saying that there is no racism racism and adultery and murder all of those things are are around this young lady that spoke a little while ago about legitimate reasons let me tell you that when i registered at highland park elementary in 1955 my first year my mother registered me and i was one of five or six hispanic kids to enter that that school and i remember the racism so you can't tell me that there's no legitimate reason that i can speak because i do have i feel i have very legitimate background on on on this issue the issue my friends is that it's how this law is being applied it's my understanding from my readings and my listening to to speeches by dr king that he wanted a race neutral he did not want a situation where race was taken into consideration that's what he was fighting and it seems to me like this is exactly what that is exactly the the exact reverse of what has happened i mean just as was classically said a little while ago conceco apparently is not hispanic enough you know i don't know what you know it means to have resegregation of hispanic districts so that we can have hispanic districts have resegregation of or continued segregation of black districts so that they there can be a black representative i mean that that just seems to fly in the face instead of having an integrated society instead of having a promoting a political diversity it seems like we just like like the opposite is happening so yes you know i do believe that there's still racism but i also believe that there's also still murder i still i believe that there you have to have laws against all of those things but i also believe that these are moral questions as well as legal questions and i believe in the constitution just the way that it was written because within the constitution there are laws that there is a way by which change can be accomplished without getting into the streets without any type of violent protest there is a way to do it and i think that that is the beauty of our country and those that want to change the law can do it and it's that simple i am a proud conservative hispanic and i'm not gonna apologize for that i'm sorry no i'm sorry for you okay yes ma'am um my name is katelyn airhart and i'm a senior in high school but i just want to y'all were talking about in the whole premise of this is getting rid of the um writing the voting rights act and so i was wondering if in getting rid of it if we're just getting rid of the section five the whole idea of getting rid of it is it just the section five that's more debatable or is it the entire thing like you said section two that was actually like proven mr trainer i think section five is the most egregious portion of the voting rights act and just to put it in in practical terms if texas and all the other southern states were required to pay 25 percent more of their income taxes than every other state we would all we would all think that was egregious and that's what section five says is that these states these states in the southern part of the united states some indian reservations out west some communities uh in uh so a couple of the boroughs in new york you're being signal you're being singled out and applied to you the law differently than the rest of the country uh and i think that applies to the voting rights act i mean applies to the to the voter id question as well i mean that's why uh the georgia voter id question is so important for the state of texas is because it's a section five covered jurisdiction so i think when we talk about the most troubling part of the voting rights act it is section five and again it's it's the one that reverses the roles when we go to court where you have to prove that you're not being racist whereas section two you bring a normal lawsuit saying i you know my my rights have been violated and again do we really need that i i don't know that we do there's already federal law that covers that anyways and you know 42 usc 1983 covers the state acting against someone's civil rights anyways whether it be the 13th 14th or 15th amendment and it applies to the states and so you know there are other laws out there that have been around a lot longer than the voting rights act has that that can be used to do the same thing so there are problems with other parts of the voting rights act but section five is the most egregious so we would get rid of all of it that's just what i'm asking in trying to get the supreme court likely to strike out section five well and you know given the way that the supreme court addresses constitutional questions i think i think that they would start with section five uh and and they've been presented that opportunity a couple of times so you know the northwest austin municipal utility district challenged section five of the voting rights act and instead of dealing with the constitutional question they went to a different part of the voting rights act and said well you have the opportunity to bail out and we're going to let you avail yourself of that so you know the supreme court it's it's a weighty topic when they decide the constitutionality of a hard fought piece of legislation like the voting rights act and so i think they will take a minimalist approach and say well we're if section five is what's being challenged and that's what is being challenged uh both out of tennessee uh and out of the state of texas right now so i think that's probably going to be the first step now could that ultimately lead to section two being challenged down the road possibly but uh you know right now the near term is section five and dr flottis what would texas look like if section five is struck um well let's see i wrote a long list of things that it looked like before section five existed including uh poll taxes and arbitrarily changing polling places section five though is the enforcement section so it forces the jurisdiction to follow the law section two allows someone to sue a jurisdiction because they suspect that a violation of the law has occurred now the the difference between the two is that in section section five is an automatic trigger the jurisdiction has to go to the department justice for pre clearance to show that they're obeying the law or they're in violation of law section two requires that one of you citizens out there decide there's a violation of uh a voting rights law and then find an attorney that can really argue your case well come up with the money to go to court and take the whole thing that's the difference for them to say the section five is the most egregious section five if section five were to be overturned it would gut the entire voting rights act it really would so that that's what's the supreme court wouldn't have to strike the rest of it down section five would just kill the whole thing we're we're running out of time here but representative not representative but mr. Rodriguez you wanted to comment thank you um when when you're looking at again looking at this law you got to remember okay if somebody has committed something wrong punish that individual do not punish an entire state and certainly don't punish an entire society that is ridiculous you've got if somebody has done something wrong punish that individual but how is this punishment it seems like what it is is a corrective measure that may take a span of time because you know we've had decades of centuries of uh of discrimination enforcement is in in my book in my interpretation interpret uh enforcement is uh it is a form of punishment because again so ensuring that we have fair elections is but we're not doing that we are not doing that with illinois we're not doing that with with ohio we're doing it with texas we're selecting a state uh we're selecting a group of states uh that you know i mean it just we're just zeroing in on that i hear i hear the audience talking about based upon history and you know when when the voting rights act was passed it didn't apply to the state of texas texas yeah texas didn't have the voting rights act applied to it until 1973 and the only reason that texas had the voting rights act applied to it was because of of language barriers exactly and requiring texas to print ballots in both spanish and english and requiring texas to print polling locations in both spanish and english it had nothing to do with the fact that texas had uh the i mean the the whole the whole start of the act is revolves around whether or not there's a test or a tax in place to cover a jurisdiction it didn't apply to texas because of that we weren't keeping people from voting it's that it's that there there were there were language barriers that have been corrected and i don't think anybody thinks that if section five goes away that the state of texas is going to stop printing ballots in both spanish and english or in harris county that they'll continue to print them in the various forms of chinese dialects that they have to print them in because you know we we've moved beyond that and and it's not it's not section five of the voting rights act that's keeping texas to continuing to do that gil garcia well you know it's true about texas and i think there was politics initially you know linden johnson was president and i i think he was reluctant to have texas included in that but you know i think i think egregious is a is a word that i have a lot of trouble applying that to section five it's it's an extreme measure and people who who supported initially would say it was an extreme measure but it was an extreme measure because the situation was extreme and as we i mentioned earlier the state of mississippi had seven percent african-american voter registration in 1965 it's absurd and to see alabama going from 19 to 52 percent in two years mississippi going from seven to 60 percent this is miraculous so we can as i said earlier i think it's fair to discuss how long uh section five will be in place whether it should be permanent whether there is whether there is at some point whether it's no longer necessary but i would really strongly disagree with the idea that that this measure was has not been a positive part of the election process and that it hasn't had a miraculous effect in the united states and the last word we're going to represent the tre martinez fisher thank you when texas first became a covered jurisdiction under the voting rights act in 1970 or 1973 as trevid mentioned there was a case called white versus register and it's it's really just sort of serendipity because we're fighting redistricting today in 2011 2012 and we're doing it in san antonio which has been the birthplace of a lot of civil and social justice movements well white v registered involved san antonio in the 1970s and it dealt with drawing single member districts in both dallas and in bear county so that minorities would have the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice and that's one of the first things that happened in the 1970s and frankly it's still happening today in 2001 when the legislature drew a map or failed to draw a map there is a group called the legislative redistricting board they drew a map and lo and behold the department of justice under president bush george w bush objected and when that objection came out attorney general cornyn who's now united states senator guess what he said he said well they only objected to four districts in the state house i am very proud to say that at least 98 percent of the map met these requirements of the voting rights act and we'll happily fix those districts 10 years later the obama department of justice says there's a problem with the texas map and now it's we must get rid of section five because it's not working what has happened in 10 years that we now feel like we have to throw out the baby and the bathwater and i will say that nobody has mentioned that when the state of texas decided to sue the united states which we read very recently texas here lately is number one we're finally first in something we're first in suing the federal government more times in any other state this wasn't done section five wasn't challenged in redistricting they had the opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of section five and redistricting so perhaps attorney general abbott thinks we still need section five for redistricting he didn't challenge it there he threatened to challenge it and voter id when he said feds you approve this law or else we might just have to question the constitutionality of section five now that we know that they have moved forward but another state has been way out of the gate on this already and so perhaps if it was easy to get into the voting rights act by having lawmakers say put my state in that jurisdiction we represent the will of the people that's how we got to congress and the senate perhaps we should let them take us out that way let's do it legislatively why do we have to do it through the courts no one's done that in the state of texas i haven't seen senator cornyn senator hudgeson i haven't seen anybody do that and so if we're going to do this let's look at it where the state of texas puts his priorities you know perhaps this is a fair discussion for voter id it's pretty clear from the litigation redistricting that the attorney general seems to think that section five of the voting rights act is working just fine and we've settled a case in large part temporarily based on the offerings of the attorney general operating on behalf of the state of texas so it does work as a sword and a shield as it should all right well thank you very much that wraps up the texas public radio town hall meeting on the voting rights act i do want to thank our panelist dr henry flottis a professor of political science at st mary's university tray trainer and austin based attorney specializing in election law and government relations representative tray martinez fisher he represents district 116 the san antonio democrat george redriguez the president of the san antonio party gilgarcia political reporter with plaza the armist and the author of the recently published book regans comeback also a thanks to nowcast sa dot com for carrying this program live if you're listening to us on the radio you can also go to nowcast sa dot com and check out the video there also thanks to our audience participants thank you for coming up this evening and a voice in your support and taking part in the democratic process after all that is what the voting rights act is all about i'm david martin davies have a good night