<x-charset utf-8>Congress Member Stearns of Florida introduced an amendment to prohibit DOJ from enforcing Section .203. It was introduced as an amendmebt to the DOJ appropriations bill.
Jeff Wice
-----Original Message-----
From: "David Epstein" <de11@columbia.edu>
Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2006 11:21:06
To:"DANIEL TOKAJI" <tokaji.1@osu.edu>, election-law <election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>
Subject: June 28 vote on DOJ funding
Had anyone else heard about this? Apparently there was a vote last week in the House on multi-lingual ballots that came during the debate on the DOJ's funding via the budget process. Even though the amendment failed, the vote was, I would say, disturbingly close; a shot across the bow on this issue.
This came out in the Lexington Herald-Reader last Sunday (http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/state/14950807.htm: <http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/state/14950807.htm> ):
VOTING RIGHTS ACT: Voting 167 for and 254 against, the House on June 28 refused to strip the 1965 Voting Rights Act of its requirement that voting officials provide ballot information in multiple languages. The amendment was offered to the Department of Justice's fiscal 2007 budget (HR 5672). A yes vote backed the amendment.