Enforcing and Challenging the Voting Rights Act by Darling Marsha;

Author:Darling, Marsha;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

This procedure would prove remarkably effective, as the floor vote later would demonstrate.

C. The Floor

On September 17,1981, following the August recess, the House Rules Committee outlined the procedures by which the amended H.R. 3112 would be put before the entire membership of the House for a vote.136 Under the rules adopted by the Committee, two hours of debate (one hour for each side) were allowed, followed by an unrestricted amendment period.

Throughout the early part of the month of September, a quiet dialogue had persisted between Congressman Hyde, Congressman Railsback, and representatives of the civil rights leadership. This dialogue also had included a conservative forty-one year old South Carolina Congressman, Carroll A. Campbell. His state was covered by the preclearance requirements of section 5, a fact not popular with local officials. On July 23, however, Campbell had broken with his long-time friend and mentor, Senator Thurmond, lending his public support to the Act.137 Present in the House balcony that day had been Armand Derfner, himself a South Carolinian, and Althea Simmons, legislative coordinator for the NAACP. Both had been surprised and pleased by Campbell’s new position, and quickly had gone to his office to obtain a copy of his statement. Each member of this group wished to avoid a possible filibuster in the Senate and further argument over the proposed amendments. Their best hope was to continue a search for mutually acceptable language.

On September 17, Congressman Railsback introduced Campbell to representatives of the Leadership Conference gathered in his office. That afternoon, principals and staff huddled around a conference table in the Rayburn House Office Building and pored over the issues once again. During the two-week period that followed before consideration on the House floor, numerous private meetings took place, both in the office of Minority Whip Trent Lott of Mississippi, in the Capitol, and in the Speaker’s Lobby just outside the doors to the floor. On September 30, however, any possibility for a last-minute settlement disappeared when a letter signed by Chairman Edwards was circulated to the 435 members of the House. In its final paragraph, Edwards warned against floor amendments to H.R. 3112 as reported by the Judiciary Committee. “Each amendment to be offered by Republicans,” Edwards wrote, “would do serious damage to the bill. Please vote them all down.”138

General debate commenced on October 2, a day after Attorney General Smith privately forwarded his recommendations on the Act to the President. Each member of the Subcommittee and several from outside the Judiciary Committee took the well139 and spoke of the genesis of the Act,140 its accomplishments,141 and the need for the specific changes that H.R. 3112 made to the existing Act.142 Congressman McClory offered correspondence that he had solicited from state and local jurisdictions regarding the expense resulting from the bilingual ballot provisions of Title II.143 Congressman Campbell, despite his support for the Act, indicated that he planned an amendment that would allow bailout for state legislatures if two-thirds of the jurisdictions within a covered state had successfully pursued bailout.144

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