COLUMBIA, S.C. - In his bluntest comments to date, Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday that voting rights, particularly for minorities, are under assault in some states.
Speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday event in Columbia, Holder said some states had sued to challenge provisions of the Voting Rights Act and had approved new laws that would make it difficult for some minorities to register and vote this year, five decades after King and other civil rights leaders fought for access to the ballot box.
"Each of these lawsuits claims that we've attained a new era of electoral equality, that America in 2012 has moved beyond the challenges of 1965," Holder told hundreds who gathered outside the South Carolina Capitol. "I wish that were the case. But the reality is that -- in jurisdictions across the country -- both overt and subtle forms of discrimination remain all too common."
He called protecting the right to vote not only a legal issue but also a moral imperative.
Holder's comments come nearly four weeks after the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division ruled that South Carolina's voter identification law was discriminatory because it would make voting harder for minorities -- who lack sufficient forms of government-approved identification more often than whites do.
Justice Department officials weighed in on the law under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which requires approval of proposed voting-law changes in 16 mostly Southern states because they have histories of discrimination.
"We'll also continue to review other types of changes to our election systems and processes -- including to the procedures governing third-party voter registration organizations, to early voting procedures and to photo identification requirements -- to ensure that there is no discriminatory purpose or effect," Holder said.
South Carolina is one of 13 mostly Republican-controlled states that have approved new voting laws that include requiring government-approved photo ID to register or vote, shortening early voting periods and curtailing voter registration efforts by third-party groups such as the League of Women Voters and the NAACP.
