A Strategic Dominance Argument for Retaining Section 5 of the VRA

The arguments against renewing Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act fall generally into three categories. First is the claim that Section 5 is no longer necessary. Over the past four decades, the argument goes, the Voting Rights Act has wrought dramatic changes in the South, empowering minorities to the point where normal politics has taken over. These groups can now “pull, haul, and trade to find common political ground” just like other groups, and no longer need government protection to do so. In one form of this argument, Section 5 has “served its purposes” and is now a “victim of its own success.” In another, conditions on the ground have changed so profoundly that the courts will no longer find Section 5 constitutional in any case. The second type of claim concedes that we may not yet have achieved a ∗Paper prepared for presentation at the Conference on the 2007 Renewal of the Voting Rights Act, June 24-25, 2005. Preliminary Draft. Thanks go to the Russell Sage Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation for financial support. Johnson v. DeGrandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1020 (1994). Issacharoff (2004, 1731). Hasen (2005).