Ariz. challenges US law on making election changes

[August 27, 2011]  PHOENIX (AP) -- Arizona has challenged the constitutionality of a federal anti-discrimination law that requires states to get federal permission before changing its election laws and voting systems.

The law's requirements are burdensome, archaic and subjectively enforced, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne said. Supporters of the Voting Rights Act contend it protects minorities' voting rights.

"Arizona has been subjected to enforcement actions for problems that were either corrected nearly 40 years ago and have not been repeated or penalized for alleged violations that have no basis in the Constitution," said Horne, a Republican who was elected attorney general last year. "That has to stop."

His office announced the suit on Thursday, and the suit was being sent by a courier service to Washington, D.C., for filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, an aide said.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department will vigorously defend the law's constitutionality.

"The Voting Rights Act plays a vital role in our society by ensuring that every American has the right to vote and to have that vote counted," Holder said in a statement released in Washington.

The federal law was enacted in 1965 as a civil-rights measure to remove discriminatory hurdles imposed by states to hinder minority voting. Congress in 2006 renewed the law's preclearance requirement.

The provisions at issue in Arizona's lawsuit require all or parts of 16 states with a history of discrimination to get Justice Department clearance before implementing changes in how they conduct elections. Those changes range from drawing new congressional districts to voter identification requirements.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2009 ruled narrowly in a challenge to the preclearance requirement. Declining to rule on the larger constitutional issue, the justices said a Texas utility district could apply to be excused from the preclearance requirement.

In Arizona, several Democratic legislators called the lawsuit a bad idea. State Sen. Steve Gallardo said minorities' voting rights would have been diminished by a proposed new legislative district map proposed a decade ago. The federal government required the state to change that map.

If the preclearance requirement is erased, people objecting to redistricting plans or other election law changes can still file lawsuits challenging the changes, Horne said.

He said the suit probably won't be resolved in time to affect the state's current redrawing of congressional and legislative districts in the wake of the 2010 U.S. Census.

The Voting Rights Act challenge is the latest of several legal fights under way between Arizona and the federal government. Others include disputes over illegal immigration enforcement and the legalization of medical marijuana.

[Associated Press; By PAUL DAVENPORT]

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