Rep. Westmoreland on the Voting Rights Act (Take Two)

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R.-Ga.) released this statement following Thursday's passage of the VRA renewal:

"We came up short today of the votes we needed to modernize and strengthen the Voting Rights Act, largely because partisan posturing, ignorance of the act’s details and lingering prejudice toward Southerners. We lost on the vote board in the House, but we won in the grand scheme of things.

"Originally, this bill was supposed to be passed without debate and without amendments before Memorial Day. We fought with perseverance for the pride and integrity of Georgians, and we began a national dialogue on the progress we have made on race and equality. That dialogue would not have occurred without our efforts. We created a public record that will be cited when there’s an inevitable court challenge to Section 5. We needed 218 votes in the House but we’ll only need five votes on the Supreme Court. Justice will prevail. The honor of Georgia will be restored.

"Supporters of the underlying bill today kept noting that the Judiciary Committee found evidence of lingering discrimination across the nation.

"I agree there are problems across the country – which is why it defies common sense to treat a handful of states differently. The House failed to prove that the 16 states subjected to federal ‘preclearance’ of electoral laws are substantively different than the states not covered by the Voting Rights Act.

"Proponents of the bill kept citing problems in Ohio and Florida. It just shows how little they know about the bill – Ohio is not covered by the Voting Rights Act and most of Florida isn’t covered. The irony here is they voted AGAINST the Norwood amendment that would have brought those trouble areas under preclearance coverage.

"Congressman Norwood and I waged an intense campaign to modernize and strengthen the Voting Rights Act. The Congress rejected those efforts to undergird the constitutionality of the law. If this bill is tossed by the courts and the Voting Rights is undermined, the fault should be laid at the feet of Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin. His legacy will be his unyielding support for a law that endangered the future of the Voting Rights Act."