Speech #940064301

Chairman. I wish to emphasize the point that under the existing legislation there is no way that a covered southern jurisdiction in the United States can get out from under it. To bail out of the act. a jurisdiction proves that its literacy test did not discriminate. The literacy test in the State of Virginia was that a person simply had to register in his own handwriting. that was all. there was no real problem there. But now the Supreme Court of the United States has said that. in a recent effort by the State of Virginia to prove itself out from under the act. that they cannot prove that they did not discriminate In the use of a literacy test. If at the time the literacy test was used in 1964 they also had a separate but unequal school system for blacks. So now if you had a separate but unequal school system and a literacy test in 1964. there is no way that you can prove that that literacy test was not being used to discriminate. And the effect of that is for States like Virginia. where we can prove and have proven that it was not being used to discriminate. that you cannot come out from under the act. That raises a serious question because what we are doing by extending this act for 10 years is we are sentencing every covered jurisdiction to submitting every change in its voting procedure. every little change in its voting procedure. to the Attorney General of the United States. whom no one elected. until 1985 because of a presumed voter discrimination. a conclusively presumed voter discrimination which occurred in 1964.