Subject: Re: Scope of Norwood Amendment Impact
From: Rick Hasen
Date: 7/11/2006, 8:50 AM
To: rkgaddie@ou.edu
CC: election-law <election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>

I believe the statement in my commentary is correct: the Norwood amendment "basically would gut Section 5 of the VRA, leaving Hawaii as the only state subject to the VRA’s section 5 'preclearance provisions.'"  There are no other states completely covered in your chart, only *certain parts* of other states.  More importantly, the Norwood Amendment HURTS rather than HELPS the constitutionality of a renewed section 5.  There is good reason to believe that the original coverage formula in the VRA targeted jurisdictions where there was a serious problem of intentional discrimination in voting on the basis of race.  There is NO reason to believe the Norwood test targets such jurisdictions, raising the strong possibility the Supreme Court would say that a revised VRA with the Norwood amendment is unconstitutional.
Rick


rkgaddie@ou.edu wrote: 
Rick-

I enjoyed your editorial. And I support your perspective on bailout. However, I think you may be undersestimating the scope of inclusion of jurisdictions under the Norwood Amendment.  I've attached a graphic that shows counties picked up by the Norwood amendment based on just the 2000 and 2004 voter participation data. As you can see, a sizeable swath of geography gets picked up, and mainly in the states already covered by section 5.  This is far from a gutting of section 5 coverage.

I'm also trying to crosswalk these data with instances of recent Section 5 challenges and Section 2 lawsuits to see whether or not the areas of greatest concern continue to be covered.

_____________________________
Ronald Keith Gaddie
Professor of Political Science
The University of Oklahoma
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E-mail: rkgaddie@ou.edu
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-- 
Rick Hasen
William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law
Loyola Law School
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http://electionlawblog.org