Melvin Watt: “I join Chairman Sensenbrenner in opposition to the Norwood amendment. The amendment represents a fundamental…”

“I join Chairman Sensenbrenner in opposition to the Norwood amendment. The amendment represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the Voting Rights Act and its structural design by arbitrarily selecting the last three election cycles as the starting point for confronting and combating voting discrimination. The amendment unhinges section 5 from its historical connections, disrupts the delicate balance embodied by the act, and makes it likely that the act would be declared unconstitutional. The Voting Rights Act, as amended and extended on four separate occasions, struck a delicate balance that remains relevant today. The act imposes special requirements on specific jurisdictions that have a history and ongoing record of unequal policies. The Norwood amendment misguidedly seeks to establish a remedy where one already exists. Voters may seek redress for recent voting rights infractions under existing provisions of the Voting Rights Act. And where a court finds sufficient justification based on actual evidence, it may impose the identical preclearance requirements that covered jurisdictions must satisfy currently. If the Norwood amendment only duplicated the existing protections of the Voting Rights Act, perhaps the only complaint would be that it is redundant and unnecessary. In 1975, Senator Strom Thurmond offered a similar amendment to change the trigger to the next election, making virtually the same arguments that are being made by Mr. Norwood today.…”