A New Voting Law

Martin Luther King's voter registration drive in Selma has dramatized once more the massive barriers which confront Southern Negroes who attempt to register and vote. At present, approximately 40 per cent of the Negroes in the South are able to vote, although in some states the figure is much lower. In Mississippi, only seven per cent of the Negro population is registered.

The Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964 were designed to meet this problem, but they have not succeeded. The major difficulty in the past has been that victims of discrimination have had to seek relief through the courts. And this is a slow and expensive process. Individuals may have to risk their lives and livelihoods to secure their rights. Even the Justice Department does not have a large enough staff to research and prepare the hundreds--perhaps thousands--of cases which may be necessary to strike down voting barriers.

Burke Marshall, former chief of the civil rights division of the Justice Department, conceded in a lecture at Columbia last year that the Government had not succeeded in seven years "in making the right to vote real for Negroes in Mississippi, large parts of Alabama and Louisiana, and some counties in Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee."

It is now time for emergency measures. The President should propose new legislation to establish a Voting Commission, similiar to the present Civil Rights Commission, which would be authorized to appoint Federal voting registrars for any area in which the Commission found voting discrimination. This innovation would end the tortuous delays of the present judicial route.

The registrars would move into the area--a single country, or perhaps in the case of Mississippi an entire state--and register anyone who met certain designated qualifications. Because the Fifteenth Amendment gives the Federal government the power to protect voting rights in all elections, such registration would be valid for state and local, as well as Federal, elections. The registrars would remain until local officials satisfied the Commission that they were prepared to resume registration without discrimination.

There is one danger in proposing new legislation. In the past, especially in 1963-64, Federal officials have used the excuse that civil rights acts were pending in Congress to try to quiet Negro militancy. In the summer of 1963, for example, many Congressmen warned that a Negro March on Washington, would only harm the prospects of the proposed legislation.

President Johnson must not use this tactic. Rather, he should encourage Negroes to demonstrate, march and organize--in short, to continue fighting for their rights until they win full citizenship in American society. But their battle must be his too. Only when he adds his broad power to their efforts will it be won.