Obama calls for restoration of Voting Rights Act on its 50th anniversary

Meanwhile, the best way for citizens to observe the anniversary is to do what the law made possible for everyone – register and vote.

A federal appeals court strikes down part of Texas’ Voter ID law as unconstitutional – the ruling coming on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act being signed into law. Critics of the law content that blacks, Latinos, poor and elderly voters are less likely to carry such identification.

President Lyndon B Johnson discusses the Voting Rights Act with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Obama further emphasized that Congress, state legislators, businesses, universities and citizens are all responsible for maintaining and expanding voting rights.

“Texas will continue to fight for its voter ID requirement to ensure the integrity of elections”, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said, according to Yahoo!

Without that provision to rely on, opponents of the voter ID law had to meet the higher threshold under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of proving the law discriminated against minority voters.

They include a measure that requires all states to allow one week of early voting and to allow absentee voting without asking for a reason why an absentee ballot is needed.

“There are still too many ways in which people are discouraged from voting, some of the protections that had been enshrined in the voting rights act itself had been weaken as a effect of court decisions and interpretations of the law”, Obama said on Thursday.

He said voters have to do their part, and Americans need to focus not only on the laws but also on the “habits of citizenship”. Election Day should be a national holiday so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote.

A federal appeals court judge struck down a voter suppression law in Texas that required voters to provide their ID at the polls, reported ABC News.

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-Columbia, said Wednesday during a meeting with reporters in Columbia, that congressional lawmakers must move forward with efforts to update that formula, restoring the federal oversight of voting laws.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed discriminatory voting practices, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, which were adopted after the Civil War to prevent African-Americans from registering and exercising their right to vote.