by John Payton

[reprinted with permission from "Room for Debate: A Running Commentary on the News" section of the online opinion page of The New York Times.]

John Payton, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund,  offers his views on the voting rights case before the Supreme Court.

There is no dispute as to the effectiveness of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act on our democracy.

Nevertheless, some argue today that we should move “beyond” the need for Section 5 because of the election of President Obama. They could not be more wrong. Section 5 has been and remains a vital checkpoint against those who would deliberately or inadvertently deny access to the ballot for duly registered voters.

Attorneys Debo Adegbile (left), and John Payton walk down the steps in front of the U.S. Supreme Court (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Prior to passage of the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department, despite years of litigation, was virtually powerless to prevent the widespread racial discrimination in the South (and in some Northern jurisdictions) that disenfranchised black voters. It was powerless because even if that protracted litigation produced a victory for the Justice Department in the courts, the state and local officials who had just lost would substitute new and equally discriminatory practices or procedures to achieve the same anti-democratic ends.

This happened time and again. Section 5 cut right through that determined resistance to black Americans’ participation in our democracy and, over the years, its protection has been extended to other Americans of color. Nor is its vital function merely a matter of history. In 2006 Congress reauthorized Section 5 by overwhelming margins after holding 21 hearings, taking testimony from some 200 witnesses and experts and compiling a record of more than 17,000 pages. That record revealed that some 2,400 discriminatory changes in voting practices and procedures had been caught by the Section 5 process since it was last reauthorized in 1982 to 2006.

The point? If Section 5 had not existed, those 2,400 discriminatory changes would have gone into effect – provoking years of litigation in the federal courts at a cost of millions of dollars.

America has made great and inspiring progress in shedding the noxious racist practices of the past and expanding democracy. That factual reality is evident in thousands of communities across the American landscape. But that progress is by no means proof that we should pretend the problems of the past have been eliminated. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act has been a stalwart guardian of democracy in America. The Court must declare that it remain so.

• Listen to the oral arguments of the voting rights case.
• Read a transcript (PDF) of the oral discussion before the Court.