Justice undone

The resignation of a civil-rights attorney at the Justice Department sheds light on the administration's refusal to enforce election laws fully. Are some voters more equal than others? | Emily Belz

Photo captured from video

WASHINGTON—"How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?" This was one of the "qualifying" questions posed to blacks attempting to register to vote up until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed such discriminatory practices. Some states would require blacks who tried to register to vote to recite the entire Constitution by heart as a "literacy" test. In Alabama, more than 181,000 blacks were registered to vote before the state changed its constitution in 1901 to throw up a maze of barriers to voting, like a poll tax and requirements that voters be "intelligent and virtuous." After the changes, only 3,000 African-Americans registered.

Civil-rights victories shattered these egregious and widespread violations of equality under the law. But sin—including racial sin—didn't go to sleep. And the Justice Department now, according to an attorney who recently resigned from the agency, is refusing to enforce equally parts of the Voting Rights Act and to enforce at all an anti-fraud section of the "motor voter" law. As the nation gears up for midterm elections in the fall—and with contested elections in 2000 not yet a distant memory—the Department's stance raises questions about its commitment to ballot integrity.