[Senate Report 109-295]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



                                                       Calendar No. 523
109th Congress                                                   Report
                                 SENATE
 2d Session                                                     109-295

======================================================================
 
 FANNIE LOU HAMER, ROSA PARKS, CORETTA SCOTT KING, AND CESAR E. CHAVEZ 
      VOTING RIGHTS ACT REAUTHORIZATION AND AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2006

                                _______
                                

                 July 26, 2006.--Ordered to be printed

                                _______
                                

    Mr. Specter, from the Committee on the Judiciary, submitted the 
                               following

                              R E P O R T

                             together with

                            ADDITIONAL VIEWS

                         [To accompany S. 2703]

      [Including cost estimate of the Congressional Budget Office]

    The Committee on the Judiciary, to which was referred the 
bill (S. 2703) to amend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 having 
considered the same, reports favorably thereon with an 
amendment and recommends that the bill (as amended) do pass.

                                CONTENTS

                                                                   Page
  I. Purpose of the Voting Rights Act.................................2
 II. History of the Bill and Committee Consideration..................2
III. Section-by-Section Summary of the Bill...........................4
 IV. Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate........................5
  V. Regulatory Impact Evaluation.....................................7
 VI. History of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.........................7
VII. Expiring Provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965............10
VIII.The House and Senate Records....................................10

 IX. Clarifications to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.................15
  X. Additional Views of Mr. Kyl.....................................22
 XI. Additional Views of Mr. Cornyn and Mr. Coburn...................25
XII. Additional Views of Mr. Leahy, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Biden, Mr. Kohl, 
     Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Feingold, Mr. Schumer, and Mr. Durbin.......54
XIII.Changes in Existing Law Made by the Bill, as Reported...........55

XIV. Appendices......................................................65

                  I. Purpose of the Voting Rights Act

    The Voting Rights Act of 1965, Pub. L. 89-110, 79 Stat. 
437, as amended, 42 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 1973 to 1973bb-1 (2000), 
was enacted to remedy 95 years of pervasive racial 
discrimination in voting, which resulted in the almost complete 
disenfranchisement of minorities in certain areas of the 
country. The Act is rightly lauded as the crown jewel of our 
civil rights laws because it has enabled racial minorities to 
participate in the political life of the nation. We recognize 
the great strides that have been made in the treatment of 
racial minorities over the last forty years, but extending the 
expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act is still necessary 
to continue to fulfill its purpose. For these reasons, the 
Committee reported favorably on, and passed, S. 2703, the 
Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, and Cesar E. 
Chavez Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act, 
which extends for twenty-five years certain provisions of the 
Voting Rights Act of 1965 that are set to expire in 2007, and 
which amends several provisions of the Act to ensure that it 
can continue to serve its historic purpose.

          II. History of the Bill and Committee Consideration

    From October 18, 2005, through March 8, 2006, the 
Subcommittee on the Constitution of the House Judiciary 
Committee held ten hearings featuring testimony from forty 
witnesses. Those hearings gathered evidence concerning voting 
rights in America and explored the effects of two Supreme Court 
decisions: Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461 (2003), and Reno 
v. Bossier Parish School Board, 528 U.S. 320 (2000) (Bossier 
Parish II).
    On April 27, 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a 
hearing at which members of the House of Representatives 
submitted the voluminous record it had developed over the 
previous six months.
    On May 3, 2006, the House and Senate introduced identical 
proposals to renew and amend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 
(H.R. 9 and S. 2703).
    On May 9, 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a 
hearing on ``An Introduction to the Expiring Provisions of the 
Voting Rights Act.'' The Committee heard testimony from 
Chandler Davidson, political science professor at Rice 
University; Richard Hasen, law professor at Loyola Law School; 
Samuel Issacharoff, law professor at Columbia Law School; Ted 
Shaw, President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational 
Fund, Inc. (NAACP-LDF); and Laughlin McDonald, Director of the 
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Voting Rights Project. At 
each hearing, in addition to their oral testimony at the 
hearing, witnesses also submitted written testimony and 
articles they had written on this topic and answered written 
questions by Committee members.
    On May 10, 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a 
hearing on ``Modern Enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.'' The 
Committee heard testimony from Gregory Coleman, former 
Solicitor General of Texas; Frank Strickland, attorney and 
member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections 
in Georgia; Robert McDuff, a civil rights litigator in 
Mississippi; Juan Cartegena, General Counsel, Community Service 
Society in New York City; and Natalie Landreth, attorney for 
the Native American Rights Fund in Anchorage, Alaska.
    On May 16, 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a 
hearing on ``The Continued Need for Section 5.'' The Committee 
heard testimony from the following witnesses: Richard Pildes, 
Professor of Law at New York University; Ronald Keith Gaddie, 
Professor of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma; 
Pamela Karlan, Professor of Law at Stanford University; Anita 
Earls, Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the 
University of North Carolina and former Deputy Assistant 
Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of 
Justice; and Ted Arrington, Professor of Political Science at 
the University of North Carolina and a former Republican 
elected official in North Carolina.
    On May 17, 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a 
hearing on ``The Benefits and Costs of Section 5.'' The 
Committee heard testimony from the following witnesses: Abigail 
Thernstrom, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and Vice-
Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; Nathaniel 
Persily, Professor of Law and Political Science at the 
University of Pennsylvania; Fred Gray, Alabama civil rights 
attorney and former counsel for Rosa Parks and Martin Luther 
King, Jr.; Drew Days, Professor of Law at Yale University, 
former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, and former 
Solicitor General of the United States; and Armand Derfner, a 
voting rights attorney in South Carolina.
    On June 13, 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a 
hearing on ``The Continuing Need for Section 203's Provisions 
for Limited English Proficient Voters.'' The Committee heard 
testimony from John Trasvina, Interim President and General 
Counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education 
Fund (MALDEF); Mauro Mujica, Chairman and CEO of U.S. English; 
Peter Kirsanow, Commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil 
Rights and member of the National Labor Relations Board; 
Margaret Fung, Executive Director of the Asian-American Legal 
Defense and Education Fund; Deborah Wright, Los Angeles County 
Executive Liaison Officer and Acting Assistant Registrar for 
the Election Services Bureau; and Linda Chavez, Chairman of the 
Center for Equal Opportunity and President of One Nation 
Indivisible.
    On June 21, the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil 
rights and Property Rights of the Senate Judiciary Committee 
held a hearing on ``Reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act: 
Policy Perspectives and Views from the Field.'' The 
Subcommittee heard testimony from Debo Adegbile, Associate 
Director of Litigation of the NAACP Legal Defense and 
Educational Fund, Inc.; Gerald A. Reynolds, Chairman of the 
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and Assistant General Counsel 
of Kansas City Power & Light Co.; David Canon, Professor in the 
Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin; 
John J. Park, Jr., an Assistant Attorney General in the Office 
of the Attorney General of Alabama; Donald M. Wright, General 
Counsel of the North Carolina State Board of Elections; and 
Carol Swain, Professor of Political Science and Professor of 
Law at Vanderbilt University.
    On July 10, 2006, the Subcommittee on the Constitution, 
Civil Rights and Property Rights of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee held a testimony-only hearing on ``The Continuing 
Need for Federal Examiners and Observers to Ensure Electoral 
Integrity.'' The Subcommittee received testimony from Mark F. 
(Thor) Hearne, II, National Counsel to the American Center for 
Voting Rights--Legislative Fund; Kay Coles James, former 
Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management; Constance 
Slaughter-Harvey, an attorney in private practice in Forest, 
Mississippi, and former Mississippi Assistant Secretary of 
State for Elections and General Counsel; Dr. James Thomas 
Tucker, voting rights consultant to the National Association of 
Latino Elected and Appointed Officials; and Alfred Yazzie, 
Navajo Language Consultant for the U.S. Department of Justice 
and Certified Navajo Interpreter.
    On July 13, 2006, the Subcommittee on the Constitution, 
Civil Rights and Property Rights of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee held a hearing on ``Renewing the Temporary Provisions 
of the Voting Rights Act: Legislative Options after LULAC v. 
Perry.'' The Subcommittee heard testimony from Roger Clegg, 
President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal 
Opportunity in Sterling, Virginia; Professor Sherrilyn Ifill, 
professor at the University of Maryland Law School in Baltimore 
and former Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and 
Educational Fund, Inc.; Nina Perales, Southwest Regional 
Counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational 
Fund (MALDEF); Michael Carvin, a partner with the law firm of 
Jones Day, specializing in constitutional, appellate, civil 
rights, and civil litigation against the Federal Government; 
Professor Joaquin Avila, Assistant Professor of Law at Seattle 
University School of Law in Seattle, Washington; and Abigail 
Thernstrom, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and Vice 
Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
    On July 19, 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee met in 
open session to consider the bill S. 2703. A technical 
amendment was offered by Mr. Leahy to provide that the short 
title of the bill, S. 2703, would be expanded to include the 
name of Cesar E. Chavez. The technical amendment was agreed to 
by voice vote. An amendment was offered by Dr. Coburn to 
provide that persons who state that they speak English ``well'' 
in response to the Census Bureau's inquiry would not be 
considered limited-English proficient under section 203(b)(3) 
of the Voting Rights Act. The amendment was defeated by voice 
vote. The motion to report favorably the bill, S. 2703, was 
agreed by a roll call vote of 18-0.

              III. Section-by-Section Summary of the Bill


Section 1

    Section 1, as amended, provides that the Act may be cited 
as the ``Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, and 
Cesar E. Chavez Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and 
Amendments Act of 2006.''

Section 2

    Section 2 explains that the ``purpose of this Act is to 
ensure that the right of all citizens to vote, including the 
right to register to vote and cast meaningful votes, is 
preserved and protected as guaranteed by the Constitution.'' 
Section 2 sets forth the Senate's findings that ``[s]ignificant 
progress has been made,'' but ``vestiges of discrimination in 
voting continue to exist.''

Section 3

    Section 3 eliminates the provisions for federal election 
examiners, who, in the past, were used to ensure that voters 
were not excluded from voter registration lists. These 
examiners have not been used for that purpose in over 20 years. 
Section 3 also eliminates the provisions for terminating 
federal examiner certifications. In the remaining provisions of 
the Act, all references to federal examiners have been replaced 
with references to federal observers.
    Section 3 also alters one of the standards for certifying 
jurisdictions for federal observer coverage. Currently, the 
Attorney General may appoint federal observers to monitor 
polling places in covered jurisdictions if the Attorney General 
has received written complaints from at least twenty residents 
who have been denied the right to vote by the government. 
Section 3 amends the Voting Rights Act to allow the Attorney 
General to do so provided that at least two ``residents, 
elected officials, or civic participation organizations'' have 
complained in writing that voting rights violations ``are 
likely to occur.''

Section 4

    Section 4 provides for a 25-year renewal of the coverage 
formula stated in section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 
It also requires Congress to reconsider these provisions in 15 
years.

Section 5

    Section 5 responds to, in part, two Supreme Court decisions 
that interpreted the criteria for preclearance of voting 
changes under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Reno 
v. Bossier Parish School Board, 528 U.S. 320 (2000) (Bossier 
Parish II), and Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461 (2003).

Section 6

    Section 6 amends the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to allow 
certain prevailing plaintiffs to collect ``reasonable expert 
fees, and other reasonable litigation expenses.''

Section 7

    Section 7 extends the requirements of section 203 of the 
Voting Rights Act of 1965 through 2032.

Section 8

    Section 8 allows use of American Community Survey census 
data under the Act.

             IV. Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate

    The Committee sets forth, with respect to the bill, S. 
2703, the following estimate and comparison prepared by the 
Director of the Congressional Budget Office under section 402 
of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974:

                                                     July 20, 2006.
Hon. Arlen Specter,
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
    Dear Mr. Chairman: The Congressional Budget Office has 
prepared the enclosed cost estimate for S. 2703, the Fannie Lou 
Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, and Cesar E. Chavez 
Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006.
    If you wish further details on this estimate, we will be 
pleased to provide them. The CBO staff contact is Matthew 
Pickford.
            Sincerely,
                                          Donald B. Marron,
                                                   Acting Director.
    Enclosure.

    Summary: S. 2703 would reauthorize and amend the Voting 
Rights Act of 1965. Major provisions of the legislation would 
extend certain expiring provisions of the act for 25 years, 
expand the use of federal observers at polling sites, and 
authorize the use of the American Community Survey to identify 
areas that may need bilingual voting assistance.
    CBO estimates that implementing S. 2703 would cost $1 
million in fiscal year 2007 and $15 million over the 2007-2011 
period, subject to the availability of appropriated funds. 
Enacting the bill would have no impact on direct spending or 
revenues.
    Section 4 of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) 
excludes from the application of the act any legislative 
provisions that enforce constitutional rights of individuals. 
CBO has determined that S. 2703 would fall within that 
exclusion because it would protect the voting rights of 
minorities and those with limited proficiency in English. 
Therefore, CBO has not reviewed the bill for mandates.
    Estimated cost to the Federal Government: The estimated 
budgetary impact of S. 2703 is shown in the following table. 
The costs of this legislation fall within budget function 800 
(general government).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                       By fiscal year, in millions of dollars--
                                                                    --------------------------------------------
                                                                       2007     2008     2009     2010     2011
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                        SPENDING SUBJECT TO APPROPRIATION
OPM spending under current law for voting rights program:
    Estimated authorization level..................................        2        0        0        0        0
    Estimated outlays..............................................        2        0        0        0        0
Proposed changes:
    Estimated authorization level..................................        1        4        3        3        3
    Estimated outlays..............................................        1        4        3        3        3
OPM spending under S. 2703 for voting rights program:
    Estimated authorization level..................................        3        4        3        3        3
    Estimated outlays..............................................        3        4        3        3       3
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: OPM = Office of Personnel Management.

    Basis of estimate: For this estimate, CBO assumes that S. 
2703 will be enacted near the end of fiscal year 2006, that the 
necessary amounts will be appropriated over the 2007-2011 
period, and that spending will follow historical spending 
patterns for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
    The legislation would extend for 25 years certain expiring 
provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Under current law, the 
Department of Justice (DOJ) certifies the appointment of 
federal observers to work at polling sites when it has received 
20 or more written complaints from residents regarding voting 
rights violations. OPM, through its Voting Rights Program, 
works closely with DOJ to assign voting rights observers to 
locations designated by the department. OPM currently has about 
1,000 intermittent employees who serve as neutral monitors at 
particular polling sites on election days. Since 1966, OPM has 
deployed 26,000 observers to 22 states.
    The legislation would amend current law to authorize the 
Attorney General to assign federal observers without using the 
certification process to election sites if he or she has had a 
reasonable belief that violations of the 14th or 15th amendment 
have occurred or will occur at a polling site. Based on 
information from OPM and the current cost of operating the 
observer program, CBO estimates that the Voting Rights Program 
would spend about $4 million in general election years and 
about $3 million in other years.
    Intergovernmental and private-sector impact: Section 4 of 
UMRA excludes from the application of the act any legislative 
provisions that enforce constitutional rights of individuals. 
CBO has determined that S. 2703 would fall within that 
exclusion because it would protect the voting rights of 
minorities and those with limited proficiency in English. 
Therefore, CBO has not reviewed the bill for mandates.
    Previous CBO estimate: On May 17, 2006, CBO transmitted a 
cost estimate for H.R. 9, the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and 
Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and 
Amendments Act of 2006, as ordered reported by the House 
Committee on the Judiciary on May 10, 2006. The two versions of 
the bill are similar and CBO's cost estimates for these bills 
are identical.
    Estimate prepared by: Federal Costs: Matthew Pickford; 
impact on state, local, and tribal governments: Sarah Puro; 
impact on the private-sector: Paige Piper/Bach.
    Estimate approved by: Peter H. Fontaine, Deputy Assistant 
Director for Budget Analysis.

                    V. Regulatory Impact Evaluation

    In compliance with rule XXVI of the Standing Rules of the 
Senate, the Committee finds that no significant regulatory 
impact will result from the enactment of S. 2703.

              VI. History of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

    In 1965, Congress at last began to fulfill our Nation's 
promise of full participation in the democratic process for all 
Americans by passing the Voting Rights Act. That Act created 
permanent, nationwide protection for every American citizen, 
protections that remain vital to voters today. It also created 
certain temporary provisions, which were reauthorized and 
expanded in 1970,\1\ 1975,\2\ 1982,\3\ and (with respect to 
language assistance) 1992.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970, Pub. L. 91-285, 84 Stat. 
314.
    \2\ Pub. L. 94-73, 89 Stat. 402 (1975).
    \3\ Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1982, Pub. L. 97-205, 96 Stat. 
134.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Prior to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act, African-
Americans and other minorities were prevented from exercising 
their constitutional rights through violence, intimidation, and 
systematic and deliberate State action.
    Tragically, there are too many examples of this overt 
hatred and discrimination to detail them all in this record. 
But understanding the environment of bigotry that led to the 
Act's passage helps to understand its applicability today and 
in the future.
    The effort to give all voters full access to the ballot box 
was thwarted systematically and violently. In 1961, the Student 
Non-violent Coordinating Committee began a black voter 
registration drive in McComb, Mississippi, led by ``Robert 
Moses, a black field secretary who had quit his job as a 
private-school mathematics teacher in New York to work full 
time on voter registration in the South.'' Abigail Thernstrom, 
Whose Vote Counts? 14 (Harvard University Press, 1987). ``Moses 
was attacked and beaten by a cousin of the sheriff; a co-worker 
was ordered out of a registrar's office at gunpoint and then 
hit with a pistol; a black sympathizer was murdered by a state 
representative; another black who asked for Justice Department 
protection to testify at the inquest was beaten (and three 
years later killed); a white activist's eye was gouged out; 
and, finally, twelve SNCC workers and local supporters were 
fined and sentenced to substantial terms in jail.'' Id. And 
those were just a few of many incidents.
    The ``usual'' legislation, however, had failed to break the 
usual pattern of black disfranchisement. Voting rights 
litigators in the South in the early 1960s had learned several 
lessons. The first concerned the literacy test. ``No matter 
from what direction one looks at it,'' V.O. Key had written in 
1949, ``the Southern literacy test is a fraud and nothing 
more.'' It was no less a fraud in 1965. In the 1960s, southern 
registrars were observed testing black applicants on such 
matters as the number of bubbles in a soap bar, the news 
contained in a copy of the Peking Daily, the meaning of obscure 
passages in state constitutions, and the definition of such 
terms as habeas corpus. By contrast, even illiterate whites 
were being registered. Booker T. Washington had believed that 
``brains, property, and character'' would ``settle the question 
of civil rights,'' but eighty years after the founding of 
Tuskegee Institute blacks with brains, property, and character 
in the city of Tuskegee still found themselves unable to 
demonstrate their literacy. ``If a fella makes a mistake on his 
questionnaire, I'm not gonna discriminate in his favor just 
because he's got a Ph.D.,'' the chairman of the Board of 
Registrars self-righteously maintained. Id. at 15.
    ``The long struggle for black voting rights during the 
Twentieth Century crested on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, 
when peaceful demonstrators were savagely attacked by law 
enforcement officers on March 7, 1965.'' Testimony of Chandler 
Davidson, An Introduction to the Expiring Provisions of the 
Voting Rights Act and Legal Issues Relating to Reauthorization, 
Hrg. before the Senate Judiciary Committee (May 9, 2006). This 
``Bloody Sunday, was filmed by news photographers and 
immediately telecast around the world. It shocked the 
conscience of America, and at the behest of President Lyndon 
Johnson, a bipartisan Congress passed the Voting Rights Act a 
few months later.'' Id.
    The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to ``foster our 
transformation to a society that is no longer fixated on 
race,'' to an ``all-inclusive community, where we would be able 
to forget about race and color and see people as people, as 
human beings, just as citizens.'' Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 
461, 490 (2003) (quoting Rep. John Lewis). The Act includes a 
permanent provision, section 2, that applies to every voter in 
America. ``As amended by Congress in 1982, it prohibits any 
voting qualification or practice that results in denial or 
abridgement of voting rights on the basis of a citizen's race, 
color, or membership in one of four language-minority groups: 
speakers of Spanish or of Native American, Native Alaskan, and 
Asian languages.'' Testimony of Chandler Davidson, supra. The 
Act also includes several temporary provisions that ``Congress 
renewed and expanded * * * in 1970, 1975, and 1982, the last 
time for 25 years.'' Id.
    Congress's enactment of the Voting Rights Act presaged an 
immediate and breathtaking transformation. The Voting Rights 
Act of 1965 had a concrete impact on individuals' lives. 
``Maynard Jackson's mother (in her middle age) was the first 
black in Atlanta to obtain a library card; in 1973 her son was 
elected mayor. In Selma, Alabama, in 1965, Andrew Young placed 
his life in jeopardy on behalf of black voting rights; only 
seven years later he was the first black congressman elected 
from the Deep South since Reconstruction.'' Abigail Thernstrom, 
Whose Vote Counts? 1 (Harvard University Press, 1987).
    The Voting Rights Act of 1965 had a concrete impact on 
Americans' attitudes and beliefs. In 1975, only 20% of African-
Americans said they had good friends who were white; by 2003, 
the figure had jumped to 88%. And the proportion of whites with 
good friends who were African American soared from 9% to 82%. 
Testimony of Abigail Thernstrom, Understanding the Benefits and 
Costs of Section 5 Pre-Clearance, Hrg. before the Senate 
Judiciary Committee (May 17, 2006).
    Similarly, the Voting Rights Act had a concrete impact on 
America's political landscape. The covered jurisdictions that 
once sponsored violence against minority voters now elect 
hundreds of minorities to elected office. In Georgia, the 
voting age population is 27.2% African-American, and African-
Americans comprise 30.7% of its delegation to the U.S. House of 
Representatives and 26.5% of the officials elected statewide. 
U.S. Census Bureau Report on 2004 Election; The Bullock-Gaddie 
Voting Rights Studies: An Analysis of Section 5 of the Voting 
Rights Act (2006). Black candidates in Mississippi have 
achieved similar success. The State's voting age population is 
34.1% African-American, and 29.5% of its representatives in the 
State House and 25% of its delegation to the U.S. House of 
Representatives are African-American. Id. As of 2003, Texas had 
elected 2,000 Latinos to office; two years before, California 
voters had sent 757 Latinos to office. Id. America has had two 
African-American Secretaries of State, Colin Powell and 
Condoleezza Rice--both of whom have been touted as formidable 
candidates for President of the United States, and two African-
American Supreme Court Justices, legendary civil rights lawyer 
Thurgood Marshall, and former head of the Equal Employment 
Opportunity Commission Clarence Thomas.
    Congress is once again confronted with the expiration of 
several of the Voting Rights Act's temporary provisions. The 
five provisions of the Voting Rights Act set to expire in June 
and August of 2007 are sections 4, 5, 6, 8, and 203.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\ Sections 7 and 9, which provide additional procedures for 
examiners appointed under section 6, expire together with section 6.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

       VII. Expiring Provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

    Five provisions of the Voting Rights Act are set to expire 
in June and August of 2007.
    Section 4(b) of the Act sets out a formula to identify 
discriminatory, or ``covered,'' jurisdictions. 42 U.S.C. 
Sec. 1973b(b). In 1965, a political subdivision was covered 
under section 4(b) if (1) it used a literacy test or other 
device as a condition for voter registration on November 1, 
1964, and (2) either less than 50% of eligible persons were 
registered to vote on that date or less than 50% of such 
persons voted in the Presidential election of that year. Id. 
Congress has since added similar triggers using data from 1968 
and 1972. Id. Congress has also added jurisdictions with a 
significant population of non-English speakers. 42 U.S.C. 
Sec. 1973b(f).
    Section 5 provides that if a jurisdiction is covered under 
section 4(b), then all voting laws in that jurisdiction must be 
pre-approved either by the Justice Department or the federal 
district court for the District of Columbia, with the burden of 
proof on the jurisdiction to show an absence of discriminatory 
purpose or effect. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1973c.
    Section 203 requires covered jurisdictions to provide 
bilingual elections for American Indians, Asian Americans, 
Alaskan Natives, or persons of Spanish heritage who are not 
proficient in English.
    Sections 6 and 8 ensure that minority voters may register 
to vote and cast their ballots. Section 6 provides for federal 
election examiners to prepare and maintain lists of eligible 
voters in covered jurisdictions. Section 8 provides for federal 
election observers to ensure that all voters are permitted to 
cast their ballots and that all ballots are properly counted.

                   VIII. The House and Senate Records

    The Senate Judiciary Committee held nine hearings regarding 
the bill, S. 2703, at which the Committee received testimony 
from 46 witnesses. In addition, the House Judiciary Committee 
held 12 hearings featuring 46 witnesses. The total record 
consists of over 15,000 pages. The House and Senate owe thanks 
to the many groups dedicated to the civil rights of Americans 
which, over the past two years, have collected and analyzed 
evidence regarding voting rights in America.
    Just as it did for each previous enactment and 
reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, 1970, 1975, 
and 1982, the Senate collected data consisting of statistics, 
findings by courts and the Justice Department, and first-hand 
accounts of discrimination.

                        A. STATISTICAL EVIDENCE

1. Minority Registration and Turnout

    In 1965, there was significant evidence that black 
registration was dramatically lower than white registration, 
and that this significant difference was explained primarily by 
the purposeful attempts to disenfranchise black citizens. 
Indeed, in some states, the gap was 50 percentage points. In 
Alabama, black registration was just 18.5% and in Mississippi, 
was a dismal 6.4%. Voting Rights Legislation, Sen. Rep. 89-162, 
at 44 (1965).
    Due to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, minorities in covered 
jurisdictions have made great strides over time. Indeed, 
presently in seven of the covered States, African-Americans are 
registered at a rate higher than the national average. 
Moreover, in California, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, 
and Texas, black registration and turnout in the 2004 election 
(the most recent Presidential election) was higher than that 
for whites. In Louisiana and South Carolina, African-American 
registration was 4 percentage points lower than that for 
whites--a rate identical to the national average. Virginia, 
however, remains an outlier: in the 2004 election, black 
registration was 7 percentage points lower than the national 
average, black registration was 11 percentage points lower than 
white registration, and black turnout was 13 percentage points 
lower than white turnout. There is some reason to believe that 
without the Voting Rights Act's deterrent effect on potential 
misconduct, these rates might be considerably worse.
    In the 2004 election, nationwide, Latinos registered and 
turned out at rates significantly lower than white voters in 
the 2004 election--roughly 30 percentage points lower. In Texas 
and California, the gap was slightly smaller--26 percentage 
points in each State.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                2004 Registration                       2004 Turnout
                State                ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                              Minority            White             Minority            White
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alabama.............................  Black: 72.9%...........        73.8%  Black: 63.9%...........        62.2%
Alaska..............................  n/a....................          n/a  Native: 41.4%..........  Non-Native:
                                                                                                           68.4%
Arizona.............................  Black: 55.3%...........        61.4%  Black: 45.6%...........        55.8%
                                      Latino: 30.5%..........  ...........  Latino: 25.5%..........  ...........
California..........................  Black: 67.9%...........        56.4%  Black: 61.3%...........        51.3%
                                      Latino: 30.2%..........  ...........  Latino: 25.6%..........  ...........
Florida.............................  Black: 52.6%...........        64.7%  Black: 44.5%...........        58.4%
                                      Latino: 38.2%..........  ...........  Latino: 34.0%..........  ...........
Georgia.............................  Black: 64.2%...........        63.5%  Black: 54.4%...........        53.6%
Louisiana...........................  Black: 71.1%...........        75.1%  Black: 62.1%...........        64.0%
Mississippi.........................  Black: 76.1%...........        72.3%  Black: 66.8%...........        58.9%
North Carolina......................  Black: 70.4%...........        69.4%  Black: 63.1%...........        58.1%
South Carolina......................  Black: 71.1%...........        74.4%  Black: 59.5%...........        63.4%
Texas...............................  Black: 68.4%...........        61.5%  Black: 55.8%...........        50.6%
                                      Latino: 41.5%..........  ...........  Latino: 29.3%..........  ...........
Virginia............................  Black: 57.4%...........        68.2%  Black: 49.6%...........        63.0%
Nationwide..........................  Black: 64.3%...........        67.9%  Black: 56.1%...........        60.3%
                                      Latino: 34.3%..........  ...........  Latino: 28.0%..........  ...........
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Source for Citizen Minority Voting Age Population: U.S. Census Bureau Report on 2004 Election.
* Source for all other information: The Bullock-Gaddie Voting Rights Studies: An Analysis of Section 5 of the
  Voting Rights Act.

2. Minority Elected Officials

    For years, States had created unconstitutional barriers for 
minority candidates resulting in few minorities serving in 
elected office. In 1964, for example, there were only 
approximately 300 African-Americans in public office, including 
just three in the United States Congress. Few, if any, black 
elected officials were elected anywhere in the South. While the 
Constitution ``does not require proportional representation as 
an imperative of political organization,'' City of Mobile v. 
Bolden, 446 U.S. 55, 75-76 (1980), and the Voting Rights Act 
itself specifically rejects a requirement of proportional 
representation, both stand for the elimination of purposeful 
obstacles to minorities holding office. The Nation has made 
great progress in eliminating such obstacles--even if the work 
of establishing civil rights for all is not yet complete. Much 
of that progress is due to the Voting Rights Act.
    According to data made available to the Senate, today there 
are more than 9,100 black elected officials, including 43 
members of the United States Congress, the largest number ever. 
Id. at 2. ACLU, Promises to Keep: The Impact of the Voting 
Rights Act in 2006 (March 2006). ``The Act has also opened the 
political process for many of the approximately 6,000 Latino 
public officials who have been elected and appointed 
nationwide,'' including 263 at the state or federal level, 27 
of whom serve in Congress. Id. Indeed in Georgia, minorities 
are elected at rates proportionate to or higher than their 
numbers. While Georgia's voting age population is 27.2% 
African-American, 30.7% of its delegation to the U.S. House of 
Representatives and 26.5% of the officials elected statewide 
are African-American. Black candidates in Mississippi have 
achieved similar success. The State's voting age population is 
34.1% African-American, and 29.5% of its representatives in the 
State House and 25% of its delegation to the U.S. House of 
Representatives are African-American.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                                                                                               Minority
                                     Citizen Minority                                                                                         Percentage
                                        Voting Age       Minority Percentage  Minority Percentage    Number Minority    Minority Percentage    in U.S.
              State                  Population (2000      in State Senate       in State House      Officials (2001)      in U.S. House        Senate
                                          Census)               (2005)               (2005)                              Delegation (2006)    Delegation
                                                                                                                                                (2006)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alabama..........................  Black: 24.5%........  22.86%.............  25.71%.............  756................  14.3%..............           0%
Alaska...........................  Black: 3.0%.........  Black: 5.0%........  Black: 2.5%........  n/a................  0%.................           0%
                                                         Native: 25.0%......  Native: 20.0%......
Arizona..........................  Hispanic of any       Latino: 16.7%        Latino: 15.0%        Latino: 268 (2000).  Latino: 25%........           0%
                                    race: 17.9%.          (2003).              (2003).
California.......................  Hispanic of any       22.5%..............  22.5%..............  757 (as of 2000)...  Latino: 11.3%......           0%
                                    race: 21.4%.
Florida..........................  Black: 13.0%........  Black: 7.5%........  Black: 13.3%.......  Black: 243.........  Black: 12%.........  Latino: 50%
                                   Hispanic of any       Latino: 15.0%......  Latino: 9.2%.......  Latino: 89.........  Latino: 12%........
                                    race: 12.6%.
Georgia..........................  Black: 27.2%........  19.6%..............  21.7%..............  611................  30.7%..............           0%
Louisiana........................  Black: 30.0%........  23.1%..............  21.9%..............  705................  14.3%..............           0%
Mississippi......................  Black: 34.1%........  21.2%..............  29.5%..............  897................  25%................           0%
North Carolina...................  Black: 20.5%........  14.0%..............  15.8%..............  491................  7.7%...............           0%
South Carolina...................  Black: 27.8%........  17.4%..............  20.1%..............  534................  16.7%..............           0%
Texas............................  Black: 11.6%........  Black: 6.5%........  Black: 9.3%........  Black: 460.........  Black: 9.4%........           0%
                                   Hispanic of any       Latino: 19.4%......  Latino: 18.0%......  Latino: 2,000 (as    Latino: 15.6%......
                                    race: 26.5%.                                                    of 2003).
Virginia.........................  Black: 18.4%........  12.5%..............  11.0%..............  246................  9.1%...............           0%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Source for Citizen Minority Voting Age Population: U.S. Census Bureau Report on 2004 Election.
* Source for all other information: The Bullock-Gaddie Voting Rights Studies: An Analysis of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act; Joint Center for Pol. &
  Econ. Studies, Black Elected Officials 14 (2001) (Table 2), Materials.

                 B. COURT VERDICTS AND DOJ ENFORCEMENT

    In 1965, the Congress relied upon findings by federal 
courts and the Justice Department that the covered States were 
engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional behavior. South 
Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 329-30 & nn.38, 39 
(1966). For example, the 1965 Senate Report observed that 
Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi had lost every voting 
discrimination suit brought against them, and in the previous 8 
years each State had eight or nine courts find them guilty of 
violating the Constitution. Voting Rights Legislation, Sen. 
Rep. No. 89-162, at 9-10 (1965).

1. Court Verdicts

    The current record discusses hundreds of cases alleging 
voting rights violations. Since 1982, six published cases have 
ended in a court ruling or a consent decree finding that one of 
the 880 covered jurisdictions had committed unconstitutional 
discrimination against minority voters. The same number of 
cases ended in a finding that the covered jurisdictions had 
committed unconstitutional discrimination against white voters. 
During that same time period, six cases have found that a non-
covered jurisdiction committed unconstitutional discrimination 
against minority voters. See Appendix I for full list.
    Examining Voting Rights Act cases also is instructive. 
Since 1982, 39 court cases have ended with a finding that one 
of the 880 covered jurisdictions had violated section 2 of the 
Voting Rights Act--the permanent provision of the Voting Rights 
Act that prohibits discrimination nationwide. During that same 
time period, 40 court cases have ended with a finding that one 
of the non-covered jurisdictions had violated section 2. See 
Appendix II for full list. Plainly, the Voting Rights Act has 
done much to achieve its original aims.

2. Department of Justice Enforcement Efforts

    The record also indicates that the Justice Department has 
issued 754 objection letters since 1982:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                                                    Percent of
                                                                                                    submissions
                                                                        Number of     Number of      receiving
                                Year                                   submissions    objection      objection
                                                                                       letters        letter
                                                                                                     (percent)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1982...............................................................            2848           66            2.32
1983...............................................................            3203           52            1.62
1984...............................................................            3975           49            1.23
1985...............................................................            3847           37            0.96
1986...............................................................            4807           41            0.85
1987...............................................................            4478           29            0.65
1988...............................................................            5155           39            0.76
1989...............................................................            3920           30            0.77
1990...............................................................            4809           37            0.77
1991...............................................................            4592           75            1.63
1992...............................................................            5307           77            1.45
1993...............................................................            4421           69            1.56
1994...............................................................            4661           61            1.31
1995...............................................................            3999           19            0.48
1996...............................................................            4729            7            0.15
1997...............................................................            4047            8            0.20
1998...............................................................            4021            8            0.20
1999...............................................................            4012            5            0.12
2000...............................................................            4638            4            0.09
2001...............................................................            4222            7            0.17
2002...............................................................            5910           21            0.36
2003...............................................................            4628            8            0.17
2004...............................................................            5211            3            0.06
2005...............................................................            4734            1           0.002
2006...............................................................            4094            1           0.002
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Data provided by the Department of Justice, Hrg. Before the Senate Judiciary Committee (May 10, 2006)
  (testimony of Wan J. Kim, Assistant Att'y Gen., Civil Rights Div.) (data current as of May 8, 2006)

    It is important to note, however, that many of the 
objection letters included in the above chart were the result 
of the Justice Department's application of a standard 
subsequently struck down by the Supreme Court as 
unconstitutional. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Justice 
Department required jurisdictions to include ``the maximum 
number of majority-minority districts that it was possible to 
create. The Supreme Court ruled that this policy amounted to 
unconstitutional racial gerrymandering and struck it down. 
Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 921 (1995); see also Bush v. 
Vera, 517 U.S. 952, 958-59 (1996); Hunt v. Cromartie, 526 U.S. 
541 (1999). In including in the chart objection letters that 
were subsequently found unconstitutional, we do not mean to 
endorse the government's earlier position that was struck down.

3. First-Hand Accounts of Voting Discrimination

    Most of the record adduced in the House and Senate 
Judiciary Committees is devoted to first-person accounts of 
alleged discrimination. Such accounts can be significant 
because they demonstrate the real impact of any ongoing 
discrimination.
    In 1991, Mississippi legislators rejected proposed House 
and Senate redistricting plans that would have given African-
American voters greater opportunity to elect representatives of 
their choice, referring to one such alternative on the House 
floor as the ``black plan'' and privately as ``the n- plan.'' 
DOJ objected, concluding that a racially discriminatory purpose 
was at play. In the 1992 elections, the cured redistricting 
plans boosted the percentage of African-American 
representatives in the legislature to an all time high: 27% of 
the House and 19% of the Senate (up from 13% and 4%, 
respectively, in a state where 33% of the voting-age population 
is African-American). Robert McDuff, Voting Rights in 
Mississippi: 1982-2006, RenewTheVRA.org at 9-10.
    Additionally, a witness claimed that ``in North Carolina in 
Alamance County, a sheriff took it upon himself to get a sample 
list of Latino voters and then announce . . . I'm going to go 
door to door knocking on people's houses and ask--and see proof 
of citizenship.'' Leslie Lobos, Testimony at Nat'l Comm'n on 
VRA Southern Reg'l Hrg., House hrg. 201 (Oct. 18, 2005). These 
types of anecdotes, and the others in the record, demonstrate 
that the type of behavior that may warrant oversight by federal 
officials. If individuals deny minorities access to the ballot 
box, equal justice is denied.
    Despite the numerous examples of continued discrimination, 
some of the testimony gathered indicates that certain States 
have made great progress under the Voting Rights Act. For 
example, a witness recounted that ``[d]uring the last 
redistricting cycle, the Alaska Redistricting Board took 
special care to preserve existing `Native Districts'--districts 
which provided Native voters the opportunity to elect the 
candidates of their choice.'' Nat'l Comm'n on VRA Report, at 
57. One Arizona voting rights attorney, who had represented 
voters for four decades, observed that ``Arizona was added in 
1975 because of an amendment that Congress had adopted that 
said a voting test included the language in which five percent 
of the people, other than English, five percent of the people 
spoke. To wit, Spanish. And in a state where more than 50 
percent of those who were registered to vote--were not 
registered to vote. Arizona was such a state, in 1975. But 
Arizona is not such a state today.'' Paul Eckstein, Testimony 
at Nat'l Comm'n on VRA Southwestern Reg'l Hrg., House hrg. 291 
(Oct. 18, 2005). Without the Voting Rights Act, it is difficult 
to know whether such progress would be possible.
    The sheer bulk of the record showing both continued 
problems and significant improvements--nearly 15,000 pages--
compels us to summarize these first-hand accounts of 
discrimination. Accordingly, we attach Appendix III, a 
comprehensive list of every account of discrimination 
articulated in the House record and the Senate record available 
at the time of this writing (several Senate witnesses had not 
responded as of this writing).

          IX. Clarifications to the Voting Rights Act of 1965

    Section 5 of the legislation amends the Voting Rights Act 
by abrogating, in part, two recent Supreme Court decisions: 
Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461 (2003), and Reno v. Bossier 
Parish Sch. Bd., 528 U.S. 320 (2000) (``Bossier Parish II''). 
The changes work together and are designed to protect 
minorities from purposeful, unconstitutional discrimination and 
to eliminate potential obstacles to minority representation in 
elected bodies. With regard to redistricting plans, they 
protect naturally occurring districts that have a clear 
majority of minority voters.

                               A. PROCESS

    When the Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965, and 
for each reauthorization, consideration was initiated in the 
House. This Congress followed the same practice. From October 
18, 2005, through March 8, 2006, the Subcommittee on the 
Constitution of the House Judiciary Committee held ten hearings 
featuring testimony from forty witnesses. At those hearings, 
the House gathered extensive factual evidence and considered 
proposals to amend section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to 
address Bossier Parish II and Georgia v. Ashcroft.
    The House and Senate introduced identical versions of the 
Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting 
Rights Act Reauthorization Act on May 3, 2006. Because the 
Senate had not yet held substantive hearings on the Senate 
bill, S. 2703--other than a hearing on April 27, 2006, at which 
members of the House of Representatives submitted the record 
that the House had developed--we relied heavily upon the 
House's examination of the proposed language in section 5. We 
found particularly informative the testimony from witnesses 
called to explain the meaning of and context for the new 
provisions.
    In the course of our consideration, concerns were raised. 
The Senate Committee on the Judiciary responded by convening 
hearings in which we further investigated issues implicated by 
the amendments in section 5 of the bill. The Committee heard 
from several witnesses who helpfully commented on the 
amendments and assured us that the language reflected our 
intent.

                   B. ``ANY DISCRIMINATORY PURPOSE''

    The Supreme Court's decision in Bossier Parish II has 
created a strange loophole in the law: it is possible that the 
Justice Department or federal court could be required to 
approve an unconstitutional voting practice ``taken with the 
purpose of racial discrimination.'' Testimony of Nina Perales, 
Renewing the Temporary Provisions of the Voting Rights Act: 
Legislative Options after LULAC v. Perry, Hrg. before the 
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property 
Rights of the Senate Judiciary Committee (July 13, 2006). 
``[A]fter Bossier Parish II, the Supreme Court has directed 
preclearance authorities to permit changes that have an 
unconstitutional, racially discriminatory purpose as long as 
the purpose is simply to perpetuate unconstitutional conditions 
and not to make them actually worse.'' Pamela S. Karlan, 
Responses to Written Questions from Sen. Kennedy (submitted for 
May 16, 2006 hearing). The federal government should not be 
giving its seal of approval to practices that violate the 
Constitution. Under this amendment, which forbids voting 
changes motivated by ``any discriminatory purpose,'' it will 
not do so.
    During the hearings, witnesses echoed the explanation 
provided by Pamela S. Karlan that ``[t]he amendment of section 
5 to overturn the Supreme Court's interpretation in Bossier II 
. . . only forbids states from making changes that would 
themselves violate the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.'' 
Testimony of Pamela S. Karlan, The Continuing Need for Section 
5 Pre-Clearance, Hrg. before the Senate Judiciary Committee 
(May 16, 2006) (emphasis added); accord Juan Catagena, 
Responses to Written Questions from Sen. Schumer (submitted for 
May 10, 2006 hearing). They testified that the language 
encompasses voting practices that are ``taken with the purpose 
of racial discrimination,'' that are ``intentionally 
discriminatory,'' and that are ``purposefully taken . . . to 
lock out racial and language minorities from political power.'' 
Testimony of Perales, supra; Anita Earls, Reponses to Written 
Questions from Sen. Cornyn (submitted for May 16, 2006 
hearing); Responses of Catagena, supra.
    The language of the bill, ``discriminatory purpose,'' is 
clear on its face. Voting practices adopted with a 
``discriminatory purpose . . . do, of course, violate the 
Constitution.'' Testimony of Pamela S. Karlan, supra. This is 
familiar language. It is the language that the Supreme Court 
uses in defining unconstitutional behavior under the Fourteenth 
and Fifteenth Amendments. It is the language of cases such as 
City of Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980), and Washington v. 
Davis, 426 U.S. 229 (1976).
    The question of whether ``any discriminatory purpose'' 
provided protections equal to, or beyond, the Constitution was 
fundamental at the hearings. Several witnesses had raised 
concerns that expanding section 5 of the Voting Rights Act 
might render section 5 unconstitutionally broad. Testimony of 
Michael Carvin, Renewing the Temporary Provisions of the Voting 
Rights Act: Legislative Options after LULAC v. Perry, Hrg. 
before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and 
Property Rights of the Senate Judiciary Committee (July 13, 
2006); Testimony of Abigail Thernstrom, Renewing the Temporary 
Provisions of the Voting Rights Act: Legislative Options after 
LULAC v. Perry, Hrg. before the Subcommittee on the 
Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights of the Senate 
Judiciary Committee (July 13, 2006). Committee Members rejected 
these concerns because witnesses who supported the bill, S. 
2703, assured Members that the amendment ``causes no 
constitutional difficulty whatsoever, since the amendment only 
forbids states from making changes that would themselves 
violate the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.'' Testimony of 
Karlan, supra; accord id. (``Amending section 5 to prohibit all 
unconstitutional discrimination with respect to the right to 
vote, rather than only the subset of unconstitutional 
discrimination that is also retrogressive poses no 
constitutional difficulties under any conceivable theory of 
congressional power.'').
    Another witness confirmed that adding the phrase ``any 
discriminatory purpose'' posed no problems since it merely 
reiterated the constitutional standard: ``[T]here can be no 
constitutional difficulties in prohibiting under Section 5 all 
unconstitutional discrimination touching upon the right to 
vote--discrimination which would also violate the 14th and 15th 
Amendments to the Constitution. Restoring Section 5 
preclearance review to a pre-Reno [v. Bossier Parish] standard 
would make Section 5 consistent with the prohibition in these 
Constitutional amendments.'' Responses of Catagena, supra.
    One traditional and important standard for identifying 
unconstitutional racial discrimination is to ask whether the 
challenged action departs from normal rules of decision. Courts 
and the Justice Department should ask whether the decision not 
to create a black-majority district departed from ordinary 
districting rules. If a state has a large minority population 
concentrated in a particular area, ordinary rules of 
districting--following political and geographic borders and 
keeping districts as compact as possible--would recommend that 
those voters be given a majority-minority district. If the 
State went out of its way to avoid creating such a majority-
minority--one that would be created under ordinary rules--that 
is unconstitutional racial discrimination.
    This amendment also has the effect of preventing the 
recurrence of some Justice Department policies. For years, the 
Justice Department required States to maximize majority-
minority districts at any cost. The result was bizarrely shaped 
districts and maps gerrymandered beyond recognition, all on the 
basis of race. The Supreme Court repeatedly ruled that this 
policy violated the Constitution. See, e.g., Miller v. Johnson, 
515 U.S. 900, 921 (1995); Bush v. Vera, 517 U.S. 952 (1996); 
Hunt v. Cromartie, 526 U.S. 541 (1999). It is perverse to think 
that, under the guise of enforcing voting rights, the Justice 
Department was forcing States to violate citizens' 
constitutional voting rights. This bill prevents future 
incidences of such behavior by depriving the Justice Department 
of the power to define for itself ``discriminatory purpose'' 
under the Voting Rights Act.
    During the Senate hearings, some witnesses raised concerns 
that the amendment could be misinterpreted, and that the 
Justice Department or federal courts might compel the creation 
of so-called influence or coalitional districts. The adopted 
language does not prevent a state official from declining to 
combine a group of minority voters with a group of white voters 
who tend to support the same parties and candidates in a 
district where candidates supported by minorities will reliably 
prevail. Although such an action may make it more difficult for 
that coalition of voters to elect their preferred candidate, 
the Voting Rights Act is designed to ferret out and stop 
unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of race or 
ethnicity. It is not designed to protect political parties, or 
to prevent statewide political realignments from being 
reflected in the redistricting process. Nor can any racial or 
political group claim a right under the Fourteenth or Fifteenth 
Amendment to have its members placed as often as possible in 
districts where candidates of the party favored by that group's 
members will prevail. The ultimate goal of the Constitution's 
Fourteenth Amendment is to ensure that persons of all races are 
treated equally. Those implementing and applying the Voting 
Rights Act must keep in mind that the Act is designed to 
enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
    The language ``any discriminatory purpose'' does not permit 
a finding of discriminatory purpose that is based, in whole or 
part, on a failure to adopt the optimal or maximum number of 
majority-minority districts or compact minority opportunity 
districts. Nor does it permit a finding of discriminatory 
purpose based on a determination that the plan seeks partisan 
advantage or protects incumbents. The Constitution and the 
courts already define racial discrimination and it is that 
constitutional definition which we incorporate. Indeed, it 
would raise serious constitutional questions if we were to 
adopt a free-flowing definition of purpose--or authorized the 
Justice Department to invent one--that is untethered from the 
Constitution's commands or the Supreme Court's precedents. By 
anchoring the language of section 5 in the Fourteenth and 
Fifteenth Amendments, we limit Executive Branch discretion and 
prevent future incidents of overreaching.

                  C. ``PREFERRED CANDIDATE OF CHOICE''

    Another important aspect of the Voting Rights Act is the 
protection afforded to minorities with respect to districting 
plans established after each census. For over two decades, the 
Supreme Court applied a workable standard when reviewing such 
plans under section 5. The Court asked whether under the 
proposed plan, ``the ability of minority groups . . . to elect 
their choices to office is . . . diminished.'' Beer v. United 
States, 425 U.S. 130, 141 (1976). In areas with racially 
polarized voting, this was often equivalent to asking whether 
the plan maintained naturally occurring majority-minority 
districts.
    In the 2003 case of Georgia v. Ashcroft, the Court replaced 
this definition--that is, one that protects against 
retrogression--with a totality of the circumstances approach. 
The Court held that Section 5 permits states to replace 
majority-minority districts in which minorities have the 
ability to elect a candidate of choice with ``coalition'' or 
``influence'' districts in which minorities have less voting 
power.
    Whatever the merits of such an approach, experts in the 
area of voting rights have explained that the Georgia standard 
is unworkable. The concept of ``influence'' is vague and the 
concept of a ``coalition'' district is difficult to define. 
Theodore M. Shaw, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP 
Legal Defense and Educational Fund, testified that he was 
``skeptical that a workable standard of minority voters' 
`influence' exists, or could be devised and implemented.'' 
Testimony of Theodore M. Shaw, Hrg. before the Subcommittee on 
the Constitution of the House Judiciary Committee 25 (Nov. 9, 
2005). And Mr. Shaw was not alone, as numerous witnesses who 
testified before the House and Senate explained that the 
Georgia standard is functionally unworkable. E.g., Testimony of 
Robert Kengle, Hrg. before the Subcommittee on the Constitution 
of the House Judiciary Committee 136 (Nov. 9, 2005); Testimony 
of David T. Canon, Reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act's 
Temporary Provisions: Policy Perspectives and Views from the 
Field, Hrg. before the Senate Judiciary Committee (June 21, 
2006); Appendix to Testimony of Nathaniel Persily, The 
Continued Need for Section 5, Hrg. before Senate Judiciary 
Committee (May 16, 2006).
    The House witnesses were also unified in their conclusion 
that Congress needed to adopt language in order to prevent the 
substitution of coalition or influence districts for naturally 
occurring majority-minority districts. Mr. Shaw testified, 
``What Georgia v. Ashcroft does is open a door to cracking, 
[or] dilution'' of majority-minority districts in order to 
limit minorities' voting power. Testimony of Theodore M. Shaw, 
supra, at 58. Attorney Anne Lewis explained that the purpose of 
this language is to prevent elected officials from unpacking 
majority-minority districts into ``influence'' or 
``coalitional'' districts. Testimony of Anne W. Lewis, Hrg. 
before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the House 
Judiciary Committee 32 (Nov. 9, 2005); accord id. at 35.
    Accordingly, S. 2703 specifically amends section 5 of the 
Voting Rights Act to clarify that it protects the ability of 
minority voters ``to elect their preferred candidates of 
choice,'' and thus re-adopts--and clarifies further--the Beer 
standard. The phrase ``preferred candidate of choice'' was 
first proposed in the House hearings by Mr. Shaw, Ms. Lewis, 
and Congressman Tyrone Brooks to solve this problem.
    These witnesses made it clear that the new language did not 
require the maximization or creation of majority-minority 
districts. As one witness explained, the Supreme Court has held 
``in Miller v. Johnson and Shaw v. Hunt that maximization of 
minority voting strength is an improper reading of Section 5,'' 
Testimony of Kengle, supra, 139, and this bill does not change 
that. Ms. Lewis explained that the language ``preferred 
candidate of choice'' was not aimed at drawing ``bizarre 
shape[d]'' majority-minority districts. Testimony of Anne W. 
Lewis, supra, 34.
    Instead, the language seeks to protect naturally occurring 
majority-minority districts. Ms. Lewis explained that the goal 
of the amendment was to prevent states from dismantling or 
``refusing to draw naturally occurring geographically compact 
majority-minority districts.'' Id. Mr. Shaw likewise stated 
that the ``preferred candidate of choice'' language was 
designed to prevent legislators from intentionally `` 
`cracking' or `fragmenting' geographically compact minority 
voting communities.'' Testimony of Shaw, supra, 24.
    If covered jurisdictions are permitted to break up 
districts where minorities form a clear majority of voters and 
replace them with vague concepts such as influence, coalition, 
and opportunity--a standard under which no one factor or 
specific combination of factors is determinative--this may 
actually facilitate racial discrimination against minority 
voters.
    Particularly disconcerting is the prospect that the Georgia 
opinion potentially opens the door to increased substitution of 
partisan interests for the ability of minorities to elect their 
preferred candidate of choice. Several House witnesses 
articulated the problem in clear terms: ``[To] the extent that 
[we] can imagine what measures would be used to determine 
whether substantive representation or influence has been 
enhanced to prevent retrogression, these measures amount to 
simply helping Democratic Party candidates . . . Helping 
Democratic Party candidates would be argued to be equivalent to 
increasing minority voter influence and helping minority 
substantive representation. In other words, influence 
districts, if seen as a replacement for opportunities for 
minority voters to elect representatives of their choice, would 
become simply a rationale for creating Democratic party 
gerrymanders.'' Prepared Statement of Theodore S. Arrington, 
Hrg. before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the House 
Judiciary Committee 84 (Nov. 9, 2005).
    However, as we learned from witnesses, this is not an 
acceptable result. Congressman Brooks made this point when he 
stated that ``. . . retrogression would be something I could 
never accept. I would not ever sacrifice the full protections 
of section 5 . . . simply to promote a particular candidate or 
a political party. And I think that's basically what it came 
down to in 2001 in Georgia. We were putting political decisions 
ahead of what the Voting Rights Act really is all about, and I 
think we made a mistake.'' Testimony of Rep. Tyrone Brooks, 
Hrg. before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the House 
Judiciary Committee 76 (Nov. 9, 2005). One House Member 
commented that the Georgia legislature ``had made a partisan 
decision to basically protect Democratic districts, or the 
Democratic Party,'' and asked, ``do you believe that that's an 
appropriate use of the Voting Rights Act?'' Rep. Brooks 
responded, ``No, I do not,'' and urged the Committee to accept 
the ``preferred candidate of choice'' language in order to 
prevent this result in the future. Id. Congressman John Lewis, 
in endorsing the amendment, stated, ``I cannot accept the 
Court's conclusion that the interests of an incumbent minority 
politician are the same as the interest of minority voters, 
with respect to redistricting. There is a clear conflict 
there.'' Prepared Statement of Congressman John Lewis, Hrg. 
before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the House 
Judiciary Committee 81 (Nov. 9, 2005).
    In truth, witnesses made clear to the committee that the 
``argument was that the Voting Rights Act was not intended to 
protect the incumbents of any political party or, for that 
matter, the incumbents of any particular race. Instead, the 
purpose of the Voting Rights Act is to protect the rights of 
voters in minority racial and language communities, who have 
historically been denied the opportunity to elect candidates of 
their choice.'' Testimony of Anne W. Lewis, supra, at 34.
    The bill's proposed language codifies this understanding. 
It eliminates any risk that the scenarios feared by Georgia v. 
Ashcroft's critics will unfold. By focusing solely on the 
protection of naturally occurring legislative districts with a 
majority of minority voters, the reauthorization bill ensures 
that minority voters will not be forced to trade away solidly 
majority-minority districts for ambiguous concepts like 
``influence'' or ``coalitional.'' Rather, as the House 
Committee Report makes clear, the bill ``rejects'' the Supreme 
Court's interpretation of section 5 in Georgia v. Ashcroft, and 
establishes that the purpose of section 5's protection of 
minority voters is, in the words of the bill, to ``protect the 
ability of such citizens to elect their preferred candidates of 
choice.''
    It is important to emphasize that this language does not 
protect any district with a representative who gets elected 
with some minority votes. Rather, it protects only districts in 
which ``such citizens''--minority citizens--are the ones 
selecting their ``preferred candidate of choice'' with their 
own voting power. These two phrases have a limited but 
important purpose: protecting naturally occurring majority-
minority districts. By limiting non-retrogression requirements 
to districts in which ``such [minority] citizens'' are able 
with their own vote power to elect ``preferred'' candidates of 
choice--not just a candidate of choice settled for when forced 
to compromise with other groups--the bill limits section 5 to 
protecting those naturally occurring, compact majority-minority 
districts with which section 5 was originally concerned. This 
approach would avoid what one minority witness called the `` 
`cracking' of majority-minority districts.'' Testimony of 
Persily, supra.
    Among the salutary effects of the ``preferred candidate of 
choice'' language is that it avoids several legal and practical 
pitfalls. First, the bill would replace the ambiguous standard 
set by the Supreme Court in Georgia v. Ashcroft with the 
workable standard in Beer. This would promote the Act's 
original purposes, provide predictability to all involved, and 
reduce wasteful litigation. Additionally, the bill would not 
lock into place coalition or influence districts, as this would 
wreak havoc with the redistricting process and would stretch 
the Voting Rights Act beyond the scope of Congress's authority 
under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Finally, the 
amendment clarifies that the competitive position of a 
political party is not the concern of the Voting Rights Act. 
This legislation definitively is not intended to preserve or 
ensure the successful election of candidates of any political 
party, even if that party's candidates generally are supported 
by members of minority groups. The Voting Rights Act was 
intended to enhance voting power, not to serve as a one-way 
ratchet in favor of partisan interests.
    Naturally occurring majority-minority districts have long 
been the historical focus of the Voting Rights Act. They are 
the districts that would be created if legitimate, neutral 
principles of drawing district boundaries, such as attention to 
county and municipal political borders, were combined with the 
existence of a large and compact minority population to draw a 
district in which racial minorities form a majority. The 
changes made by section 5 of this bill, overriding aspects of 
Georgia v. Ashcroft, would give federal authorities the tools 
they need to prevent state and local authorities from 
arbitrarily refusing to create or arbitrarily dismantling such 
districts, or from implementing other voting practices that are 
motivated by racial or ethnic discrimination.

                     X. Additional Views of Mr. Kyl

    I concur without reservation in the Chairman's report. I 
write separately simply to add a few points with regard to the 
VRARA's treatment of Reno v. Bossier Parish II, 528 U.S. 320 
(2000), and Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461 (2003).
    As the Chairman notes, the VRARA's changes to Section 5 of 
the Voting Rights Act ensure that the Act will protect the 
creation and retention of naturally occurring districts with a 
clear majority of minority voters--and nothing more. The 
Chairman emphasizes that the Act as amended by the bill does 
not protect coalitional or influence districts.
    I write separately to explain why I believe that Congress 
cannot require that state or local governments create or retain 
influence or coalitional districts. These are districts that do 
not have a majority of minority voters but that nevertheless 
reliably support candidates and parties supported by minority 
voters. I believe that extending the protections of Section 5 
of the Voting Rights Act to these districts would exceed the 
scope of Congress's power to enforce the Equal Protection 
Clause pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
    The ultimate goal of the Equal Protection Clause is to 
ensure that different races are treated equally. Even if 
influence or coalitional districts were properly understood to 
protect the interests of minority voters, rather than the 
interests of political parties--a matter that is of some 
dispute--a mandate for the creation or retention of such 
districts would not be a reasonable means of enforcing that 
Clause. If the Voting Rights Act forced states to create such 
districts whenever possible (or even only when permitted by 
neutral redistricting criteria), or barred states from 
disassembling such districts, Federal law effectively would 
require that one group of voters be placed as often as possible 
in districts where candidates and parties supported by that 
group of voters will prevail.
    Such a requirement would be problematic for several 
reasons. First, it is the nature of politics and elections that 
some voters will support a winning candidate and that some will 
support a candidate who loses. It is no violation of a person's 
voting rights that the candidate that he voted for lost. That 
is simply how elections work. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth 
Amendments protect a right to be able to vote free from the 
influence of racial discrimination. They do not protect a right 
to have one's candidate prevail in an election.
    Moreover, in jurisdictions in which the protected group of 
voters largely supports one party, a requirement that those 
voters be placed in districts where their candidates and party 
will prevail would introduce severe distortions into the 
redistricting process. In effect, that jurisdiction would be 
required to create and retain as many districts as possible 
that would reliably elect candidates of the party favored by 
the protected group of voters.
    Such a mandate would be grossly unfair to voters who 
support other parties that compete in the jurisdiction's 
elections. A requirement that one group of voters be given 
winning districts as often as possible also is a requirement 
that other voters who support competing parties be placed in 
losing districts. It is a mandate that effectively would 
require affirmative discrimination against the aspirations of 
other voters. Such a system would not be consistent with the 
principle of the equal protection of the laws. It would not be 
a reasonable means of enforcing the guarantees of the 
Fourteenth Amendment.
    Further, any application of Section 5 of the Voting Rights 
Act that would have the effect of favoring one group of voters 
above and at the expense of other voters would be in serious 
tension with other parts of the Act. Statutes with integrated 
provisions effecting a common general objective are read in 
pari matera--that is, in such a way that one provision does not 
negate or undercut another. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act 
bars the creation of a system under which members of one group 
``have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to 
participate in the political process and to elect 
representatives of their choice.'' Obviously, if Section 5 were 
applied in a way that required that one group of voters be 
given opportunities superior to those enjoyed by other groups 
to have its candidates prevail in elections, that section would 
be inconsistent with Section 2. It would contravene Section 2's 
prohibition on systems that give some groups ``less opportunity 
than other members of the electorate * * * to elect 
representatives of their choice.''
    If the different parts of the Voting Rights Act are to be 
construed in harmony, no part of that Act should be employed to 
require implementation or retention of a particular voting 
practice simply because it increases the competitive position 
of a political party that is favored by a particular group of 
voters. The Voting Rights Act does not require maximization or 
enhancement of the electoral opportunities of any particular 
group of voters--a result that could only be achieved at the 
expense of the rights of other groups of voters. Indeed, such a 
result would be at odds with the very constitutional provision 
that the Act is designed to enforce, the Fourteenth Amendment, 
which requires equal treatment of the rights and opportunities 
of different groups of voters.
    Finally, I would note that the operative assumptions 
underlying the concepts of influence and coalitional districts 
appear to be inconsistent with the predicates for Congress's 
exercise of its powers under Section 5 of the Fourteenth 
Amendment. Congress may legislate pursuant to Section 5 in 
order to enact remedial legislation designed to combat 
substantial and sustained racial discrimination. Because 
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act has been enacted and 
extended pursuant to these Fourteenth Amendment powers, it must 
be reasonably targeted at jurisdictions suspected of 
discriminating against the aspirations of minority voters. In 
reauthorizing Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, Congress 
cannot presume the existence of the opposite of the predicates 
for the exercise of its Fourteenth Amendment powers. The 
preclearance requirement cannot be based on the assumption that 
spreading out minority voters will have no negative impact on 
their electoral aspirations because other groups will readily 
support minority voters' preferred candidates. If such an 
assumption were clearly accurate, there would be no basis for 
legislating pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment 
in the first place. And if this or any future Congress were to 
incorporate such assumptions into Section 5 of the Voting 
Rights Act, it would cast doubt on the constitutionality of the 
Act's mandate that covered states and localities preclear all 
changes in their voting procedures with the Federal government.
    With these considerations in mind, I concur in the 
Committee's decision to report a bill that does not require 
influence or coalitional districts, but that instead reaffirms 
the Voting Rights Act's historical focus on protecting 
naturally occurring majority-minority districts.
                                                           Jon Kyl.

           XI. Additional Views of Mr. Cornyn and Mr. Coburn

    We regret that these views will be filed post-enactment. 
The expedited process prohibited normal order, but we believe 
the following considerations should accompany the Act's 
passage.
    The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is arguably the most 
important and effective civil rights legislation ever enacted. 
Indeed, when signing the landmark legislation into law, Lyndon 
Johnson, the President of the United States and former member 
of the Senate from the state of Texas, described the act's 
passage as ``a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that 
has ever been won on any battlefield.'' \1\ President Johnson's 
words captured the importance of the act's passage and 
underscore that it was a hard-fought victory at a tense time in 
American history.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. 
Johnson, 1965. Volume II, entry 394, pp. 811-815. Washington, DC: 
Government Printing Office, 1966.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It is no secret why the Voting Rights Act was necessary. It 
was adopted at the height of the civil rights movement, when 
numerous jurisdictions throughout the United States had 
actively engaged in the intentional, systematic 
disenfranchisement of blacks and other minorities from the 
electoral process. As the committee report and the extensive 
record reflects, these jurisdictions engaged in the 
discriminatory use of tests and devices such as literacy, 
knowledge and moral character tests--tests specifically 
designed to be failed. Even worse, violence and brutality were 
commonplace. Blacks were beaten and killed simply for 
attempting to exercise their right to participate in the 
democratic process, and civil rights activists were thwarted at 
every turn in their attempt to enact reform. This type of 
bigotry and hatred at the polls, coupled with escalating 
violence and the murder of activists, is the backdrop against 
which the Voting Rights Act was adopted.
    S. 2703, the legislation that has passed out of committee, 
is another step in our nation's long road toward equal justice 
under the law for all Americans. The legislation provides for 
the reauthorization of the expiring provisions of the Voting 
Rights Act--provisions that are designed to protect against 
discrimination at the polls. For these reasons, and because we 
believe that there are certain political subdivisions across 
the nation that would further benefit from federal oversight, 
we joined our colleagues in voting for this legislation.
    However, we do hold some significant reservations about a 
number of important issues. These concerns can generally be 
categorized as follows: (1) the record of evidence does not 
appear to reasonably underscore the decision to simply 
reauthorize the existing Section 5 coverage formula--a formula 
that is based on 33 to 41 year old data, and (2) the seemingly 
rushed, somewhat incomplete legislative process involved in 
passing the legislation prevented the full consideration of 
numerous suggested improvements to the Act.
    In short, while we support reauthorization generally, we 
reluctantly conclude that the final product is not the best 
product we might have produced had we engaged in a more 
thorough debate about possible improvements. We also conclude 
that it would have been beneficial if the Section 4 coverage 
formula had been updated in order to adhere to constitutional 
requirements--an update that would have preserved, strengthened 
and expanded the Act to ensure its future success.

    1. EVIDENCE IN THE RECORD CALLS FOR AN UPDATED COVERAGE FORMULA

    The good news is that the Act fulfilled its promise. Today, 
we live in a different--albeit still imperfect--world. Today, 
no one can claim that the kind of systematic, invidious 
practices that plagued our election systems 40 years ago still 
exist in America. And the Act resulted in almost immediate, 
measurable improvements with respect to covered jurisdictions. 
However, simply reauthorizing the expiring provisions with the 
existing coverage formula--based on 33 to 41 year old data--may 
not have been the best approach given the evidence today in 
2006.
Increased Voter Registration and Turnout Rates in Covered Jurisdictions
    In 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was adopted the average 
registration rate for black voters in the seven original 
covered states was only 29.3 percent.\2\ Today, the voter 
registration rate among blacks, for example, in covered 
jurisdictions is over 68.1 percent of the population--higher 
than the 62.2 percent found in non-covered jurisdictions.\3\ As 
the chart below indicates, voter registration data since the 
Act's original passage in 1965 shows that covered jurisdictions 
have demonstrated equal or higher voter registration rates 
among black voters as non-covered jurisdictions since the mid 
1970's.\4\ Voter turnout data is equally encouraging, with 60 
percent of black citizens casting votes in both covered 
jurisdictions and non-covered jurisdictions.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ Senate Report 162, at 44 (April 21, 1965).
    \3\ 2004 Election Data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Reflects the 
percentage as a percent of the population, as compared to as a percent 
of the Citizen Voting Age Population. Those numbers are 69.9 percent 
and 67.9 percent. In addition, certain assumptions were made to account 
for partially covered jurisdictions--North Carolina and Virginia were 
considered ``covered'' for this calculation because of their 
significant number of covered counties.
    \4\ Id.
    \5\ Id. 
    
    
    Further, statistician Keith Gaddie reported registration of 
black citizens in Alabama during the 2004 elections was 72.9% 
of the voting age population,\6\ in Georgia, 64.2%,\7\ in 
Louisiana, 71.1%,\8\ in Mississippi, 76.1%,\9\ in South 
Carolina, 71.1%,\10\ and in Virginia, 57.4% of the voting age 
population. Voter turnout rates were equally improved. For 
example, in 2004 Alabama had a 63.9% turnout rate of registered 
black voters,\11\ Georgia had a 54.4% turnout rate,\12\ 
Louisiana had a 62.1% turnout rate,\13\ Mississippi had a 66.8% 
turnout rate,\14\ South Carolina had a 59.5% turnout rate,\15\ 
and Virginia had a 49.6% turnout rate.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \6\ Understanding the Benefits and Costs of Section 5 Pre-
Clearance: Before the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 109th Cong. 5 
(2006) (Submitted testimony by Professor Keith Gaddie on May 17, 2006: 
The Bullock-Gaddie Voting Rights Studies: An Analysis of Section 5 of 
the Voting Rights Act. See Table 2 on Alabama.)
    \7\ Id. See Table 2 on Georgia.
    \8\ Id. See Table 2 on Louisiana.
    \9\ Id. See Table 1 on Mississippi.
    \10\ Id. See Table 1 on South Carolina.
    \11\ Id. See Table 3 on Alabama.
    \12\ Id. See Table 3 on Georgia.
    \13\ Id. See Table 3 on Louisiana.
    \14\ Id. See Table 2 on Mississippi.
    \15\ Id. See Table 2 on South Carolina.
    \16\ Id. See Table 2 on Virginia.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Declining Objections by the Department of Justice

    Another important indicator of the success of the Act is 
the continual decline of objections issued by the Department of 
Justice to plans submitted under section 5 for pre-clearance. 
The Supplemental Views submitted by the Chairman of the 
Committee includes a chart depicting DOJ objections since 1982. 
It is worth noting that both total objections and objections as 
a percent of submissions have declined significantly over that 
time, and as we understand, since the original passage of the 
Act.
    Our review of the data indicates that the continual decline 
has occurred under both Republican and Democrat Presidential 
administrations, dropping from 67 objections out of 2848 in 
1982 to only 19 objections out of 3,999 submissions in 1995. 
Perhaps most telling is the fact that in 2005, there was only 1 
objection out of 3,811 pre-clearance submissions.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \17\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While some maintain that the analysis may be skewed since 
Bossier v. Parrish II removed ``discriminatory purpose'' from 
the equation, the fact is that the trend has been a declining 
number of objections in covered jurisdictions over time. We 
believe this is something to celebrate as an indication of the 
success of the Act.

Anecdotal Accounts Submitted Implicate only a Portion of Covered 
        Political Subdivisions

    The volume of testimony and submissions amassed during the 
House and Senate hearings was overwhelming. Indeed, when the 
Senate Judiciary Committee held its first hearing, the House 
Judiciary Committee Chairman said, ``I am here today to present 
this Committee with the results of our examination, which 
includes almost 8,000 pages of testimony that comprise 9 of the 
10 hearing records compiled by the House Judiciary Committee.'' 
Our understanding is that ultimately the Senate received almost 
10,000 pages from the House of Representatives.
    Numerous witnesses suggested that the primary rationale for 
continued coverage based on the existing formula was over 
10,000 pages of accounts of discrimination compiled. Senate 
Judiciary staff analyzed the report during the course of 
hearings seeking to find all accounts of discrimination alleged 
in the report. The result of that effort--a 283 page summary of 
examples of discrimination--is included as Appendix 3 to the 
Committee Report.
    While we take no position on the existence of 
discrimination alleged in the accounts in the record, at face 
value the anecdotes submitted implicate only a fraction of the 
total number of covered political subdivisions.\18\ For 
example, of the 254 counties in Texas, only 22 are implicated 
by the accounts of discrimination submitted in the record. This 
analysis admittedly excludes any accounts of statewide 
discrimination (e.g. a redistricting plan)--because including 
such examples are indicative of the state policy not the local 
political subdivision.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\ It was not possible for our staffs to investigate and verify 
each and every account of discrimination submitted.

           COUNTIES SPECIFICALLY IMPLICATED IN HOUSE AND SENATE RECORD ACCOUNTS OF DISCRIMINATION \19\
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                                                   Percentage of
                                                                     Number of     Total Number      Counties
                              State                                  Counties     of Counties in    Implicated
                                                                    Implicated       the State       (Percent)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alabama.........................................................              13              67           19.40
Alaska..........................................................               5              27           18.52
Arizona.........................................................               6              15           40.00
California......................................................              10              58           17.24
Colorado........................................................               2              64            3.13
Florida.........................................................               5              67            7.46
Georgia.........................................................              27             159           16.98
Illinois........................................................               8             102            7.84
Indiana.........................................................               1              92            1.09
Kentucky........................................................               3             120            2.50
Louisiana.......................................................               2              64            3.13
Maryland........................................................               1              23            4.35
Massachusetts...................................................               2              14           14.29
Michigan........................................................               5              83            6.02
Minnesota.......................................................               2              87            2.30
Mississippi.....................................................               8              82            9.76
Missouri........................................................               1             114            0.88
Montana.........................................................               6              56           10.71
New Jersey......................................................               5              21           23.81
New Mexico......................................................               3              33            9.09
New York........................................................               8              62           12.90
North Carolina..................................................              15             100           15.00
Ohio............................................................               2              88            2.27
Pennsylvania....................................................               3              67            4.48
Rhode Island....................................................               1               5           20.00
South Carolina..................................................              23              46           50.00
South Dakota....................................................              14              66           21.21
Texas...........................................................              22             254            8.66
Virginia........................................................              14             134           10.45
Washington......................................................               1              39            2.56
Wisconsin.......................................................               3              72            4.17
Wyoming.........................................................               1              23            4.35

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ Data collected from a review of the record by Senate Judiciary Committee staff.


                       COUNTIES SPECIFICALLY IMPLICATED IN PARTIALLY COVERED JURISDICTIONS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                                                   Percentage of
                                                                      Covered                      Preclearance
                              State                                  Counties      Preclearance      Counties
                                                                    Implicated       Counties       Implicated
                                                                                                     (Percent)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
California......................................................               3               4              75
Florida.........................................................               0               5               0
Michigan........................................................               2               2             100
New York........................................................               3               3             100
North Carolina..................................................               9              40            22.5
South Dakota....................................................               2               2             100
Virginia........................................................              14             123           11.38
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Interestingly, while Florida has 5 counties that are 
subject to Section 5 coverage, none of these counties were 
implicated by the accounts of discrimination. Yet there were 5 
non-covered counties in Florida that were pointed out in the 
list of accounts. If reauthorization of Section 5 coverage is 
based on the accounts in the record, it does not seem that the 
coverage formula in Florida as re-authorized could possibly be 
appropriate.
    In the Senate Judiciary Committee mark-up, Senator Durbin 
argued in favor of reauthorization by stating that, ``[w]e have 
gathered thousands of pages of reports and evidence.'' \20\ 
While there are, in fact, thousands of pages in the record--it 
is important to clarify that there are a limited number of 
examples of discrimination and that the examples offered do not 
implicate the majority of covered political subdivisions. In 
all, of 893 covered counties, 139 are directly implicated in 
the accounts of discrimination scattered throughout those 
``thousands of pages.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \20\ Unofficial Transcript: Special Executive Business Meeting to 
Consider S. 2703, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King 
Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006: Senate 
Committee on Judiciary, 109th Cong. 19 (2006) (Oral statement of 
Senator Dick Durbin on July 19, 2006).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    There is no question that if those accounts are accurate, 
that those 139 counties are deserving of coverage under Section 
5, and possibly numerous others upon review. That is precisely 
the reason we voted for this legislation. But it would have 
been advisable for the committee or the Senate as a whole to 
consider an updated coverage formula to ensure that the 
appropriate jurisdictions were covered according to 
constitutional requirements. That kind of deliberative process 
simply was not allowed to occur.
    It strikes us that much of this is great news. Increased 
voter registration rates for African American voters in covered 
jurisdictions, reduced numbers of objections sustained, 
increased numbers of minority elected officials, fewer counties 
implicated with discriminatory activity, and generally a 
decreasing distinction, if any, between covered jurisdictions 
and non-covered jurisdictions means that there is strong and 
compelling evidence that, in fact, the Voting Rights Act has 
largely achieved the purposes that Congress had hoped for and 
that millions of people who had previously been disenfranchised 
had prayed for.
    In light of this strong indication that the act has largely 
achieved the purposes that Congress had intended, of course, 
the logical question before us was whether these provisions 
under section 5 should have been reauthorized.

   2. THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS FAILED TO PRODUCE THOROUGH DELIBERATION

Misunderstood Timing and Nature of Re-Authorization

    From the beginning of the reauthorization process, two 
critical facts were repeatedly ignored or misunderstood: (1) 
that the Voting Rights Act is, in fact, permanent and only 
certain temporary provisions are set to expire; and (2) that 
the expiring provisions were not set to expire until the summer 
of 2007--and thus there was plenty of time to work on improving 
the Act.
    The misunderstanding about the permanence of the Voting 
Rights Act--particularly by the press--is perhaps most 
troubling. In truth, the act's core provision, section 2, 
prohibits the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen 
to vote on account of race or color, is permanent, and applies 
nationwide. That provision will never expire, and it is not 
affected by the reauthorization language we review today.
    This is an important distinction because it caused a great 
deal of confusion in the public. In fact, according to the 
Department of Justice, the agency ``received numerous inquiries 
concerning a rumor that [was] intermittently circulating around 
the nation . . . According to this rumor, the Voting Rights Act 
will expire in 2007, and as a result African Americans are in 
danger of losing the right to vote in that year.'' \21\ In 
truth, as the DOJ points out, ``[t]he voting rights of African 
Americans are guaranteed by the United States Constitution and 
the Voting Rights Act, and those guarantees are permanent and 
do not expire.'' \22\ Instead, we are addressing (a) temporary 
provisions that were originally set to expire in 5 years, and 
that were adopted to subject certain jurisdictions to Federal 
oversight of the voting laws and procedures until the intent of 
the Voting Rights Act was accomplished, as well (b) certain 
temporary, later-added provisions designed to protect voters 
from discrimination based upon limited English proficiency.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\ www.usdoj.gov, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights 
Division Voting Section, Voting Rights Act Clarification.
    \22\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    We believe that this misunderstanding about the nature and 
timing of the expiration of certain provisions of the Voting 
Rights Act contributed to an unnecessarily heightened political 
environment that prohibited the Senate from conducting the kind 
of thorough debate that would have produced a superior product.

Expedited Process Reduced Focus on the Issue

    Chairman Specter readily ceded to requests that were made 
to try to create a complete record. The Chairman worked hard to 
hold a sufficient number of fair and balanced hearings, but 
given our busy schedule on the Senate floor, it was not always 
easy for Members to attend and participate. An artificial rush 
to move the House version of the Voting Rights Act through the 
Senate on an expedited basis began more than a full year prior 
to the earliest expiration of any provisions of the Act.
    The Senate Judiciary Committee held nine hearings with a 
total of forty-six witnesses. Eight of those hearings were held 
in nine work weeks--and during times when many Committee 
members had other obligations. Indeed, four hearings were held 
during a substantial floor debate on the issue of immigration--
legislation that directly involved most Judiciary Committee 
members in one way or another. Two hearings were interrupted by 
roll-call votes on the floor.
    The timing of our hearings and the expedited nature of the 
process was prohibitive to Senators who otherwise would have 
participated. Member attendance at these hearings was low. 
Indeed, at each of the first two hearings on Section 5, only 
one Senator was able to attend. Five Committee Members were 
unable to attend any of the hearings, while five others 
attended only a portion of one hearing. This is not meant as 
criticism to the Members that were unable to attend--indeed we 
unfortunately missed a number of hearings. Rather, it is meant 
to shed light on the process, a process that prohibited the 
kind of engaged discussion we would have preferred.
    The only way many Senators could ask thoughtful questions 
of witnesses at the hearings was through written questions, and 
many were submitted. In fact, Senators submitted a total of 610 
follow-up questions. Unfortunately, however, when the Senate 
marked up the legislation, we were told that 107 written 
questions to 10 witnesses were outstanding. Further, questions 
had not yet even been submitted for the final hearing--a 
hearing we had held just one week prior regarding the important 
issue of how the Supreme Court's decision in LULAC v. Perry may 
have influenced our legislation.

Suggested Improvements Not Considered

    Over the course of the many hearings we held, we heard from 
a variety of witnesses--from across the political spectrum and 
across racial lines. Many witnesses, from all sides of the 
debate, suggested improvements to the Act.
    For example, Loyola law professor Rick Hasen suggested in 
his testimony before the committee several specific ways to 
amend the Act. For example, he suggested that ``Congress should 
make it easier for covered jurisdictions to bail out from 
coverage under Section 5 upon a showing that the jurisdiction 
has taken steps to fully enfranchise and include minority 
voters,'' and that Congress should impose a shorter time limit, 
perhaps 7 to 10 years for extension. The bill includes a 25-
year extension, and the Court may believe it is beyond 
``congruent and proportional'' to require, for example, the 
State of South Carolina to pre-clear every voting change, no 
matter how minor, through 2031.'' \23\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \23\ Unofficial Transcript: An Introduction to the Expiring 
Provisions of the Voting Rights Act and Legal Issues Relating to 
Reauthorization: Before the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 109th Cong. 
25 (2006).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Similarly, Samuel Issacharoff, Professor of Constitutional 
Law at the New York University School of Law, suggested five 
ways to improve the Act during his oral testimony:

          First, I would recommend that the unit of coverage be 
        moved from the States to political subdivisions of the 
        States . . . Second, I think that is important, as 
        Professor Hasen said a minute ago, to liberalize the 
        bailout provisions . . . Third, I think that if we were 
        to start from scratch today, we might consider a 
        different kind of administrative mechanism other than 
        the preclearance, and one way of thinking about this is 
        that preclearance is extremely onerous and applies an 
        ex ante and ahead-of-time review much like the FDA to 
        any proposed change. One could also imagine a 
        Securities and Exchange Commission type reporting 
        system that covered jurisdictions who have not actively 
        violated the Act in the last 5 years, or some defined 
        period, would be required to post on a website any 
        proposed change and the reasons for it and be subject 
        to either affirmative litigation under Section 2 or 
        simply a false statement litigation . . . Fourth, I 
        would expand the jurisdictional reach of Section 5 by 
        allowing this disclosure regime to be applied to any 
        jurisdiction that has been found guilty of a Section 2 
        violation or that has engaged in affirmative actions 
        against minority voters. And, finally, I think that 
        there is reason for concern with the language on the 
        overruling of Georgia v. Ashcroft, and I think that the 
        reason for the concern is that the current statute 
        faces a climate very different from that in 1965 in 
        that you have real bipartisan competition in most of 
        the covered jurisdictions today, which means that 
        certain features of conduct, State conduct, will not go 
        by unattended, will not simply pass muster without 
        anybody realizing. And I would recommend removing 
        statewide redistricting from Section 5 overview 
        altogether. That has been an area of some controversy 
        with the Department of Justice, and it has been an area 
        where there is plenty of litigation in every 
        redistricting anyway, and I don't think Section 5 
        worked particularly effectively there.\24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \24\ Unofficial Transcript: An Introduction to the Expiring 
Provisions of the Voting Rights Act and Legal Issues Relating to 
Reauthorization: Before the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 109th Cong. 
37 (2006).

    We believe it would have been beneficial for the long-term 
viability, constitutionality and success of the Voting Rights 
Act had for the Senate Judiciary Committee to engage in a 
serious, reasoned debate over some of these suggested possible 
improvements as well as any other ideas. These improvements 
would underscore the Act's original purpose, and would 
modernize it to reflect today's reality. They would possibly 
expand the coverage of section 5 to jurisdictions where recent 
abuses have taken place or, perhaps, have improved the so-
called bailout procedures for those jurisdictions that had a 
successful record of remedying, indeed eliminating 
discrimination when it comes to voting rights.
    One idea that was offered was to update the coverage 
formula. We don't know if that is a good idea or not, but we 
would like to know. Some suggest that such an update would 
``gut'' or otherwise undercut the effectiveness of the Act--
something that certainly would not be our intention. But we are 
skeptical that this would be the result. The amendment that was 
voted on in the House, for example, would have updated the 
coverage trigger to the most recent three Presidential 
elections from the current trigger of the 1964, 1968, and 1972 
elections.
    As we understand it, coverage, after an update to cover the 
most recent three Presidential elections, would look something 
like the chart included at the end of our views, entitled 
``Effect of Basing Section Coverage on Recent Election Data.'' 
This chart reflects the effect of implementing a new coverage 
formula. In other words, rather than basing coverage on 
election data that is several decades old, where nine states 
are completely covered and a handful of other political 
subdivisions around the country are covered, one would see 
coverage of different jurisdictions around the country based on 
the updated formula. The intent would be to reflect the 
problems where they really exist and where the record 
demonstrates some justification for the assertion of Federal 
power and intrusion into the local and State electoral 
processes.
    If this map is an accurate reflection of the effects of 
updating the trigger to the most recent three Presidential 
elections, it certainly changes the coverage. But we would 
suggest, just looking at the jurisdictions on the map, it 
hardly guts it. Another alternative might have been to use the 
very evidence provided in the House and Senate record--as 
discussed above--that implicates 139 of the currently covered 
counties as well as 45 of the non-covered counties throughout 
the nation.
    The primary point is not that any of these methods is 
necessarily the right approach, but that it would have been 
beneficial for us to have had a full discussion of ways to 
improve the Act to ensure its important provisions were 
narrowly tailored and applied in a congruent and proportional 
way, something the Supreme Court will take into consideration 
when it considers the renewed Act. We believe we could have 
done it had we taken the time to do it.

Legislative Language Seemingly a Foregone Conclusion

    Probably our most significant concern is that this 
important legislation was--unfortunately--a bit of a foregone 
conclusion. As we described above, the hearings held in the 
Senate were quite informative. There were numerous 
perspectives--numerous ideas offered on how to improve the Act 
from witnesses across the ideological and racial spectrum and 
those both supportive of the reauthorization and concerned with 
the reauthorization.
    From the outset, the default seemed to be to accept the 
House product without deliberation. In fact, the findings in 
the Senate-dropped version of the bill were adopted PRIOR to a 
single hearing being held in the Senate Judiciary Committee. 
Despite the fact that each hearing had a very balanced panel 
and many amendment ideas were offered by witnesses, it was 
clear that no amendment would be given serious consideration 
because of the political nature of the bill and the expedited, 
rushed process. As described earlier in our views, the 
Committee marked up the legislation with 107 written questions 
to 10 witnesses outstanding, as well as before questions were 
even submitted to our final panel. Unfortunately, we proceeded 
without the benefit of a complete record despite the fact that 
we had plenty of time to receive the answers from witnesses and 
fully consider their implications and input.
    And the questions that Senators asked revealed that they 
were interested in at least considering amendments. Many 
Senators asked which amendments to consider and how to properly 
draft such amendments. However, when the House of 
Representatives passed H.R. 9, their version of the Voting 
Rights Act, without any amendments on July 13, 2006, it became 
clear that the Senate would pass a bill without any amendments. 
If there had been any doubt prior, the text of the bill became 
a foregone conclusion for the Senate after House passage.
    The process that led to a vote on the floor reveals that 
not a single change was permitted to be made to the legislation 
passed in the Senate. While the Committee approved by voice 
vote an amendment offered by Senator Leahy to incorporate Mr. 
Cesar Chavez's name into the title of the Act, it became clear 
that the Committee would not accept any amendments that changed 
the substance of the bill, including the amendments circulated 
by Senator Coburn. In fact, Senators expressed concern about 
any amendments that would slow the expedited passage of the 
Act. The Judiciary Committee reported out the Senate's version 
of the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King and 
Caesar Chavez Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments 
Act of 2006, S. 2703, without substantive amendment.
    Yet, Majority Leader Frist had already used Rule 14 of 
Senate procedure to place H.R. 9 on the calendar, and we were 
told that it was the House legislation would be called up for a 
full vote on the Senate floor the following afternoon. The 
rules adopted for floor debate allowed for eight hours of 
discussion evenly divided by the Republicans and Democrats and 
ruled out the ability to offer amendments on the floor. The 
process prevented any amendments on the floor so that the same 
Act that the House of Representatives approved would pass the 
Senate and there would be no conference. While a Member may 
have been able to object and require a vote on an amendment, 
the outcome was a foregone conclusion, and thus it would have 
been futile.
    Finally, even the production of this committee report--
something that normally is of the utmost significance for such 
important, complicated legislation--has been short circuited. 
Indeed, the report will not be filed until several days after 
the passage of the legislation and just before it is signed 
into law. We remain convinced that these views are critical to 
a full understanding of the legislative process behind 
enactment and thus include them in the Committee Report.

                               CONCLUSION

    We decided to support the extension of the expiring 
changes, even though it would have been preferable and even 
constitutionally advisable for us to review the application of 
the Act's pre-clearance and other provisions. Unfortunately, 
the Act's language was a foregone conclusion, and we were 
unable to have the kind of debate and discussion and perhaps 
amendment process that might have been helpful to protect the 
act against future legal challenges. We wish we would have had 
the opportunity to improve the Act--because we are confident 
that with a little work, we could have done just that.
    We cannot help but fear that the driving force behind this 
rushed reauthorization process was the reality that the Voting 
Rights Act has evolved into a tool for political and racial 
gerrymandering. We believe that is unfortunate and that 
political re-districting should be driven by objective 
parameters and should not use race to further the objectives of 
political parties.
    Nonetheless, we voted for reauthorization because of the 
unparalleled success of the Voting Rights Act in the past in 
securing the opportunity to vote. Few issues are as fundamental 
to our system of democracy and the promise of equal justice 
under law as the Voting Rights Act. The Act was specifically 
designed to ``foster our transformation to a society that is no 
longer fixated on race,'' to an ``all-inclusive community, 
where we would be able to forget about race and color and see 
people as people, as human beings, just as citizens.'' \25\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \25\ Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461, 490 (2003).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It is our sincere hope that we will move beyond 
distinctions based on race in our policymaking, lest we, in the 
words of Justice Anthony Kennedy, make ``the offensive and 
demeaning assumption that voters of a particular race, because 
of their race, think alike, share the same political interests, 
and will prefer the same candidates at the polls.''
    The question in the end is this: Is this bill that we have 
passed the very best possible product? We would conclude that 
it is not. Yet, in response to the question: Is this the very 
best that we can do under the circumstances?'' We reluctantly 
conclude that it is. And that is why we supported it in 
Committee and on the floor.

       Effect of Basing Section Coverage on Recent Election Data

    The table below reflects the results we believe would occur 
from updating the Section 4 coverage formula to 2000 and 2004 
Presidential Election data from the current formula based on 
the 1964, 1968 and 1972 election years. The original figure to 
be included in this Committee Report was a map depicting the 
counties covered. The purpose of the map was to demonstrate the 
significant coverage that would be retained in currently 
covered jurisdictions as well as the fact coverage would be 
expanded. However, GPO is unable to print such a map into the 
record, so in its place we have included the following table. 
As pointed out in the additional views, we do not suggest that 
this coverage formula is the best or preferred formula, but 
that it would have been a reasonable alternative and should 
have been given appropriate consideration in the Senate.

                                   John Cornyn.
                                   Tom Coburn.

VOTER TURNOUT DATA REPRESENTS THE PERCENTAGE OF THE CITIZEN VOTING AGE 
                               POPULATION


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                                 2004        2000
     State             County            2004 Coverage       2000 Coverage      Turnout     Turnout      Count
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AL............  Barbour County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.72%           1
AL............  Bibb County.........  Y.................  Y.................      47.28%      45.89%           1
AL............  Blount County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.68%           1
AL............  Butler County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.92%           1
AL............  Calhoun County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.78%           1
AL............  Chambers County.....  Y.................  Y.................      48.85%      43.19%           1
AL............  Cherokee County.....  Y.................  Y.................      47.50%      42.12%           1
AL............  Cleburne County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.83%           1
AL............  Coffee County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.67%           1
AL............  Coosa County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.18%           1
AL............  Covington County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.46%           1
AL............  Crenshaw County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.62%           1
AL............  Dale County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.70%           1
AL............  DeKalb County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.04%      43.39%           1
AL............  Elmore County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.84%           1
AL............  Escambia County.....  Y.................  Y.................      42.96%      40.16%           1
AL............  Franklin County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.57%           1
AL............  Geneva County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.99%           1
AL............  Houston County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.21%           1
AL............  Jackson County......  Y.................  Y.................      49.39%      43.93%           1
AL............  Lauderdale County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.77%           1
AL............  Lawrence County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.20%           1
AL............  Lee County..........  Y.................  Y.................      47.95%      44.22%           1
AL............  Limestone County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.46%           1
AL............  Macon County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.61%           1
AL............  Marion County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.73%           1
AL............  Marshall County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.87%           1
AL............  Mobile County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.96%           1
AL............  Montgomery County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.98%           1
AL............  Pike County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.90%           1
AL............  Randolph County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.56%           1
AL............  Russell County......  Y.................  Y.................      46.98%      40.89%           1
AL............  Talladega County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      42.43%           1
AL............  Tuscaloosa County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.38%           1
AL............  Walker County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.64%           1
AL............  Winston County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.61%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              AL Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          36
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AR............  Arkansas County.....  Y.................  Y.................      46.76%      41.02%           1
AR............  Ashley County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.75%      47.46%           1
AR............  Bradley County......  Y.................  Y.................      46.06%      42.74%           1
AR............  Chicot County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.23%      44.12%           1
AR............  Clark County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.75%           1
AR............  Clay County.........  Y.................  Y.................      47.25%      43.59%           1
AR............  Columbia County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.89%           1
AR............  Conway County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.16%           1
AR............  Craighead County....  Y.................  Y.................      46.57%      41.05%           1
AR............  Crawford County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.90%           1
AR............  Crittenden County...  Y.................  Y.................      43.51%      38.14%           1
AR............  Cross County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.39%           1
AR............  Dallas County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.27%           1
AR............  Desha County........  Y.................  Y.................      44.82%      41.86%           1
AR............  Drew County.........  Y.................  Y.................      45.31%      43.15%           1
AR............  Faulkner County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.22%           1
AR............  Franklin County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.02%           1
AR............  Fulton County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.84%           1
AR............  Grant County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.62%           1
AR............  Greene County.......  Y.................  Y.................      47.95%      44.73%           1
AR............  Hempstead County....  Y.................  Y.................      45.43%      44.84%           1
AR............  Hot Spring County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.56%           1
AR............  Howard County.......  Y.................  Y.................      47.05%      44.14%           1
AR............  Independence County.  Y.................  Y.................      49.39%      45.40%           1
AR............  Izard County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.17%           1
AR............  Jackson County......  Y.................  Y.................      46.82%      42.59%           1
AR............  Jefferson County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.03%           1
AR............  Johnson County......  Y.................  Y.................      46.35%      43.69%           1
AR............  Lawrence County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.49%      44.84%           1
AR............  Lee County..........  Y.................  Y.................      47.66%      44.49%           1
AR............  Lincoln County......  Y.................  Y.................      36.20%      31.56%           1
AR............  Logan County........  Y.................  Y.................      49.36%      48.83%           1
AR............  Lonoke County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.16%           1
AR............  Marion County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.15%           1
AR............  Miller County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.76%      46.62%           1
AR............  Mississippi County..  Y.................  Y.................      42.71%      34.69%           1
AR............  Monroe County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.95%           1
AR............  Nevada County.......  Y.................  ..................      48.18%  ..........           1
AR............  Ouachita County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.98%           1
AR............  Pike County.........  Y.................  Y.................      40.98%      47.76%           1
AR............  Poinsett County.....  Y.................  Y.................      41.17%      38.37%           1
AR............  Polk County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.54%           1
AR............  Pope County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.10%           1
AR............  Prairie County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.43%           1
AR............  Pulaski County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.01%           1
AR............  Randolph County.....  Y.................  Y.................      48.35%      43.01%           1
AR............  Sebastian County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.84%           1
AR............  Sevier County.......  Y.................  Y.................      44.53%      42.37%           1
AR............  St. Francis County..  Y.................  Y.................      47.22%      40.24%           1
AR............  Union County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.60%           1
AR............  Washington County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.54%           1
AR............  White County........  Y.................  Y.................      49.46%      44.14%           1
AR............  Woodruff County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      41.08%           1
AR............  Yell County.........  Y.................  Y.................      45.83%      45.81%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              AR Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          54
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AZ............  Apache County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.83%           1
AZ............  Cochise County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      41.16%           1
AZ............  Gila County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.14%           1
AZ............  Graham County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.10%      41.95%           1
AZ............  La Paz County.......  Y.................  Y.................      35.06%      31.15%           1
AZ............  Maricopa County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.44%           1
AZ............  Mohave County.......  Y.................  Y.................      43.73%      38.45%           1
AZ............  Navajo County.......  Y.................  Y.................      45.43%      40.53%           1
AZ............  Pima County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.14%           1
AZ............  Pinal County........  Y.................  Y.................      43.18%      33.02%           1
AZ............  Santa Cruz County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.26%           1
AZ............  Yuma County.........  Y.................  Y.................      39.49%      31.71%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              AZ Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          12
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CA............  Del Norte County....  Y.................  Y.................      44.04%      42.00%           1
CA............  Fresno County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.16%      49.48%           1
CA............  Imperial County.....  Y.................  Y.................      41.45%      38.87%           1
CA............  Kern County.........  Y.................  Y.................      47.46%      47.29%           1
CA............  Kings County........  Y.................  Y.................      35.32%      35.48%           1
CA............  Lake County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.10%           1
CA............  Lassen County.......  Y.................  Y.................      41.28%      40.42%           1
CA............  Madera County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.71%      46.70%           1
CA............  Merced County.......  Y.................  Y.................      44.26%      45.88%           1
CA............  Mono County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.77%           1
CA............  Riverside County....  Y.................  Y.................      47.72%      49.10%           1
CA............  San Bernardino        Y.................  Y.................      45.37%      45.98%           1
                 County.
CA............  San Joaquin County..  Y.................  ..................      47.66%  ..........           1
CA............  Stanislaus County...  Y.................  Y.................      46.90%      48.27%           1
CA............  Tulare County.......  Y.................  Y.................      45.20%      46.36%           1
CA............  Yuba County.........  Y.................  Y.................      43.89%      43.20%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              CA Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          16
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CO............  Adams County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.35%           1
CO............  Bent County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.59%           1
CO............  Crowley County......  Y.................  Y.................      33.01%      32.40%           1
CO............  Fremont County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.31%      44.17%           1
CO............  Lincoln County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.92%           1
CO............  Prowers County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.47%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              CO Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           6
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FL............  Bradford County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.13%      42.76%           1
FL............  Columbia County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.34%           1
FL............  DeSoto County.......  Y.................  Y.................      43.05%      38.45%           1
FL............  Dixie County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.80%           1
FL............  Duval County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.87%           1
FL............  Gadsden County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.07%           1
FL............  Glades County.......  Y.................  Y.................      47.96%      42.97%           1
FL............  Hamilton County.....  Y.................  Y.................      46.82%      39.61%           1
FL............  Hardee County.......  Y.................  Y.................      43.26%      38.26%           1
FL............  Hendry County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.82%      41.64%           1
FL............  Jackson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.24%           1
FL............  Lafayette County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.94%           1
FL............  Levy County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.08%           1
FL............  Liberty County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.60%           1
FL............  Madison County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.81%           1
FL............  Okeechobee County...  Y.................  Y.................      47.52%      40.71%           1
FL............  Orange County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.18%           1
FL............  Osceola County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.91%           1
FL............  Polk County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.48%           1
FL............  Suwannee County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.85%           1
FL............  Taylor County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.19%           1
FL............  Union County........  Y.................  Y.................      42.72%      37.01%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              FL Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          22
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GA............  Appling County......  Y.................  Y.................      49.41%      49.71%           1
GA............  Atkinson County.....  Y.................  Y.................      48.63%      44.05%           1
GA............  Bacon County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      40.47%           1
GA............  Baldwin County......  Y.................  Y.................      41.43%      35.06%           1
GA............  Banks County........  Y.................  Y.................      48.02%      43.31%           1
GA............  Barrow County.......  Y.................  Y.................      44.57%      37.44%           1
GA............  Bartow County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.54%      42.41%           1
GA............  Ben Hill County.....  Y.................  Y.................      46.36%      37.95%           1
GA............  Berrien County......  Y.................  Y.................      45.88%      37.71%           1
GA............  Bibb County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.59%           1
GA............  Bleckley County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.25%           1
GA............  Brantley County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.08%      43.89%           1
GA............  Brooks County.......  Y.................  Y.................      43.08%      38.55%           1
GA............  Bryan County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.52%           1
GA............  Bulloch County......  Y.................  Y.................      41.34%      34.72%           1
GA............  Burke County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.82%           1
GA............  Butts County........  Y.................  Y.................      44.42%      38.15%           1
GA............  Calhoun County......  Y.................  Y.................      45.13%      38.59%           1
GA............  Camden County.......  Y.................  Y.................      45.60%      34.46%           1
GA............  Candler County......  Y.................  Y.................      44.08%      41.13%           1
GA............  Carroll County......  Y.................  Y.................      46.90%      40.84%           1
GA............  Catoosa County......  Y.................  Y.................      49.86%      45.38%           1
GA............  Charlton County.....  Y.................  Y.................      41.97%      37.99%           1
GA............  Chatham County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.18%           1
GA............  Chattahoochee County  Y.................  Y.................      11.82%      11.80%           1
GA............  Chattooga County....  Y.................  Y.................      38.54%      33.57%           1
GA............  Clarke County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.61%      37.24%           1
GA............  Clayton County......  Y.................  Y.................      46.99%      40.83%           1
GA............  Clinch County.......  Y.................  Y.................      45.62%      39.22%           1
GA............  Coffee County.......  Y.................  Y.................      45.70%      36.71%           1
GA............  Colquitt County.....  Y.................  Y.................      39.61%      34.90%           1
GA............  Cook County.........  Y.................  Y.................      42.45%      35.72%           1
GA............  Crawford County.....  Y.................  Y.................      47.19%      39.46%           1
GA............  Crisp County........  Y.................  Y.................      40.98%      36.66%           1
GA............  Dade County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.16%           1
GA............  Dawson County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.77%           1
GA............  Decatur County......  Y.................  Y.................      44.48%      38.73%           1
GA............  Dodge County........  Y.................  Y.................      48.40%      41.83%           1
GA............  Dooly County........  Y.................  Y.................      45.03%      41.63%           1
GA............  Dougherty County....  Y.................  Y.................      49.46%      42.33%           1
GA............  Douglas County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.67%           1
GA............  Early County........  Y.................  Y.................      47.81%      40.91%           1
GA............  Echols County.......  Y.................  Y.................      36.83%      39.65%           1
GA............  Effingham County....  Y.................  Y.................      49.87%      40.85%           1
GA............  Elbert County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.93%      39.09%           1
GA............  Emanuel County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.97%      41.14%           1
GA............  Evans County........  Y.................  Y.................      42.86%      42.31%           1
GA............  Floyd County........  Y.................  Y.................      46.54%      40.95%           1
GA............  Franklin County.....  Y.................  Y.................      45.89%      37.67%           1
GA............  Fulton County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.36%           1
GA............  Gilmer County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.03%           1
GA............  Glynn County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.42%           1
GA............  Gordon County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.20%      39.93%           1
GA............  Grady County........  Y.................  Y.................      47.38%      40.54%           1
GA............  Greene County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.05%           1
GA............  Habersham County....  Y.................  Y.................      47.14%      37.59%           1
GA............  Hall County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.19%           1
GA............  Hancock County......  Y.................  Y.................      46.95%      40.49%           1
GA............  Haralson County.....  Y.................  Y.................      48.80%      43.26%           1
GA............  Harris County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.09%           1
GA............  Hart County.........  Y.................  Y.................      49.82%      43.14%           1
GA............  Heard County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      40.93%           1
GA............  Henry County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.86%           1
GA............  Houston County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.51%           1
GA............  Irwin County........  Y.................  Y.................      46.89%      40.85%           1
GA............  Jackson County......  Y.................  Y.................      45.42%      38.97%           1
GA............  Jasper County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.56%      48.04%           1
GA............  Jeff Davis County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.56%           1
GA............  Jefferson County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.24%           1
GA............  Jenkins County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      42.93%           1
GA............  Johnson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.33%           1
GA............  Jones County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.24%           1
GA............  Lamar County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.84%           1
GA............  Lanier County.......  Y.................  Y.................      45.45%      36.50%           1
GA............  Laurens County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.06%           1
GA............  Lee County..........  Y.................  Y.................      48.75%      46.32%           1
GA............  Liberty County......  Y.................  Y.................      38.44%      24.89%           1
GA............  Lincoln County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.32%           1
GA............  Long County.........  Y.................  Y.................      43.57%      35.33%           1
GA............  Lowndes County......  Y.................  Y.................      45.24%      38.01%           1
GA............  Lumpkin County......  Y.................  Y.................      49.45%      43.38%           1
GA............  Macon County........  Y.................  Y.................      47.42%      43.58%           1
GA............  Madison County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.51%      42.80%           1
GA............  Marion County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.86%           1
GA............  McDuffie County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.46%      42.93%           1
GA............  McIntosh County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.41%           1
GA............  Meriwether County...  Y.................  Y.................      48.65%      40.92%           1
GA............  Miller County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.80%           1
GA............  Mitchell County.....  Y.................  Y.................      42.07%      33.84%           1
GA............  Monroe County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.27%           1
GA............  Montgomery County...  Y.................  Y.................      48.20%      41.89%           1
GA............  Murray County.......  Y.................  Y.................      37.54%      32.87%           1
GA............  Muscogee County.....  Y.................  Y.................      48.64%      39.37%           1
GA............  Newton County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.84%      41.56%           1
GA............  Oglethorpe County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.83%           1
GA............  Paulding County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.47%           1
GA............  Peach County........  Y.................  Y.................      48.02%      42.11%           1
GA............  Pickens County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.94%      47.32%           1
GA............  Pierce County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.56%      41.49%           1
GA............  Pike County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.65%           1
GA............  Polk County.........  Y.................  Y.................      44.21%      37.79%           1
GA............  Pulaski County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.13%      46.54%           1
GA............  Putnam County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.52%           1
GA............  Quitman County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.05%           1
GA............  Rabun County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.78%           1
GA............  Randolph County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.45%           1
GA............  Richmond County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.00%      40.04%           1
GA............  Schley County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.36%           1
GA............  Screven County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      42.95%           1
GA............  Seminole County.....  Y.................  Y.................      48.33%      41.90%           1
GA............  Spalding County.....  Y.................  Y.................      47.80%      36.78%           1
GA............  Stephens County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.28%           1
GA............  Stewart County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.97%           1
GA............  Sumter County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.23%      41.27%           1
GA............  Tattnall County.....  Y.................  Y.................      38.98%      34.35%           1
GA............  Taylor County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.54%           1
GA............  Telfair County......  Y.................  Y.................      42.58%      38.55%           1
GA............  Terrell County......  Y.................  Y.................      49.77%      40.17%           1
GA............  Thomas County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.10%      39.08%           1
GA............  Tift County.........  Y.................  Y.................      45.07%      39.06%           1
GA............  Toombs County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.34%      40.90%           1
GA............  Treutlen County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      39.09%           1
GA............  Troup County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      42.75%           1
GA............  Turner County.......  Y.................  Y.................      44.63%      37.39%           1
GA............  Twiggs County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.00%           1
GA............  Upson County........  Y.................  Y.................      48.46%      40.86%           1
GA............  Walker County.......  Y.................  Y.................      44.88%      41.37%           1
GA............  Walton County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.56%           1
GA............  Ware County.........  Y.................  Y.................      42.73%      36.51%           1
GA............  Warren County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.16%           1
GA............  Washington County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.35%           1
GA............  Wayne County........  Y.................  Y.................    45.82%40        .92%           1
GA............  Wheeler County......  Y.................  Y.................      39.33%      33.41%           1
GA............  White County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.39%           1
GA............  Whitfield County....  Y.................  Y.................      49.52%      45.37%           1
GA............  Wilcox County.......  Y.................  Y.................      38.32%      36.05%           1
GA............  Worth County........  Y.................  Y.................      46.36%      38.89%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              GA Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........         137
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HI............  Hawaii County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.17%           1
HI............  Honolulu County.....  Y.................  Y.................      46.34%      41.91%           1
HI............  Maui County.........  Y.................  Y.................      48.88%      44.78%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              HI Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           3
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ID............  Elmore County.......  Y.................  Y.................      42.37%      35.19%           1
ID............  Madison County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.77%           1
ID............  Owyhee County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.83%      49.21%           1
ID............  Payette County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.75%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              ID Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IL............  Brown County........  Y.................  Y.................      44.89%      47.35%           1
IL............  Coles County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.45%           1
IL............  McDonough County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.22%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              IL Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           3
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN............  Allen County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.96%           1
IN............  Blackford County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.30%           1
IN............  Cass County.........  Y.................  ..................      48.60%  ..........           1
IN............  Clinton County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.83%           1
IN............  Daviess County......  Y.................  Y.................      49.80%      46.89%           1
IN............  DeKalb County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.88%           1
IN............  Delaware County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.28%           1
IN............  Elkhart County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.16%      44.75%           1
IN............  Fayette County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.82%           1
IN............  Grant County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.35%           1
IN............  Henry County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.87%           1
IN............  Jackson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.44%           1
IN............  Jennings County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.80%           1
IN............  Kosciusko County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.34%           1
IN............  LaGrange County.....  Y.................  Y.................      37.74%      36.75%           1
IN............  LaPorte County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.47%           1
IN............  Lawrence County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.85%           1
IN............  Marion County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.36%           1
IN............  Miami County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.63%           1
IN............  Monroe County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      42.51%           1
IN............  Montgomery County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.71%           1
IN............  Morgan County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.62%           1
IN............  Noble County........  Y.................  Y.................      48.37%      45.00%           1
IN............  Owen County.........  Y.................  Y.................      43.65%      40.72%           1
IN............  Parke County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.29%           1
IN............  Putnam County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.29%      43.50%           1
IN............  Randolph County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.77%           1
IN............  Scott County........  Y.................  Y.................      49.28%      46.39%           1
IN............  Shelby County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.62%           1
IN............  Steuben County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.12%           1
IN............  Sullivan County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.19%      49.14%           1
IN............  Switzerland County..  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.56%           1
IN............  Tippecanoe County...  Y.................  Y.................      45.13%      42.42%           1
IN............  Vigo County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.00%           1
IN............  Wabash County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.98%           1
IN............  Washington County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.09%           1
IN............  Wayne County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.15%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              IN Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          37
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KS............  Butler County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.78%           1
KS............  Finney County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.90%      43.31%           1
KS............  Ford County.........  Y.................  ..................      49.36%  ..........           1
KS............  Geary County........  Y.................  Y.................      41.59%      36.31%           1
KS............  Leavenworth County..  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.78%           1
KS............  Riley County........  Y.................  Y.................      43.07%      37.43%           1
KS............  Seward County.......  Y.................  Y.................      44.99%      43.50%           1
KS............  Wyandotte County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.70%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              KS Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           8
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KY............  Allen County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.00%           1
KY............  Barren County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.35%           1
KY............  Bell County.........  Y.................  Y.................      48.03%      46.92%           1
KY............  Bourbon County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.78%           1
KY............  Boyd County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.84%           1
KY............  Boyle County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.85%           1
KY............  Bracken County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.00%           1
KY............  Breathitt County....  Y.................  Y.................      49.39%      42.47%           1
KY............  Carroll County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.69%           1
KY............  Carter County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.26%           1
KY............  Casey County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.26%           1
KY............  Christian County....  Y.................  Y.................      45.15%      34.79%           1
KY............  Clay County.........  Y.................  Y.................      42.14%      36.94%           1
KY............  Elliott County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.20%           1
KY............  Estill County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.36%      40.69%           1
KY............  Floyd County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.68%           1
KY............  Fulton County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.86%           1
KY............  Gallatin County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.81%           1
KY............  Grant County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.78%           1
KY............  Grayson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.30%           1
KY............  Hardin County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.05%           1
KY............  Harlan County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.15%      42.48%           1
KY............  Harrison County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.36%           1
KY............  Hart County.........  Y.................  Y.................      49.58%      46.66%           1
KY............  Henderson County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.80%           1
KY............  Henry County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.32%           1
KY............  Hopkins County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.84%           1
KY............  Jackson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.74%           1
KY............  Johnson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.56%           1
KY............  Knott County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.61%           1
KY............  Knox County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      42.28%           1
KY............  Laurel County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.29%           1
KY............  Lawrence County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.60%           1
KY............  Lee County..........  Y.................  Y.................      46.95%      45.21%           1
KY............  Leslie County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.47%           1
KY............  Letcher County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.04%      46.70%           1
KY............  Lewis County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.37%           1
KY............  Lincoln County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.74%      44.10%           1
KY............  Logan County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.62%           1
KY............  Madison County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.21%           1
KY............  Marion County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.60%           1
KY............  Martin County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.02%      49.27%           1
KY............  Mason County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.69%           1
KY............  McCreary County.....  Y.................  Y.................      45.07%      38.89%           1
KY............  Meade County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.47%           1
KY............  Menifee County......  Y.................  Y.................      49.91%      45.82%           1
KY............  Morgan County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.80%      39.41%           1
KY............  Muhlenberg County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.66%           1
KY............  Owsley County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.71%           1
KY............  Pendleton County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.79%           1
KY............  Perry County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.58%           1
KY............  Pike County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.70%           1
KY............  Powell County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.87%      44.93%           1
KY............  Rockcastle County...  Y.................  Y.................      48.66%      41.81%           1
KY............  Rowan County........  Y.................  Y.................      49.04%      41.60%           1
KY............  Simpson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.41%           1
KY............  Todd County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.18%           1
KY............  Union County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.32%           1
KY............  Warren County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.97%           1
KY............  Wayne County........  Y.................  Y.................      49.67%      44.08%           1
KY............  Webster County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.24%           1
KY............  Whitley County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.13%      44.44%           1
KY............  Wolfe County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.67%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              KY Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          63
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LA............  Allen Parish........  Y.................  Y.................      47.21%      43.40%           1
LA............  Avoyelles Parish....  Y.................  Y.................      49.45%      48.33%           1
LA............  East Carroll Parish.  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.59%           1
LA............  Terrebonne Parish...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.99%           1
LA............  Vernon Parish.......  Y.................  Y.................      44.68%      37.96%           1
LA............  West Feliciana        Y.................  Y.................      41.38%      40.48%           1
                 Parish.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              LA Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           6
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MA............  Suffolk County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.07%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              MA Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MD............  Allegany County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.55%           1
MD............  Baltimore City......  Y.................  Y.................      47.47%      40.43%           1
MD............  Caroline County.....  Y.................  Y.................      48.85%      41.94%           1
MD............  Cecil County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.93%           1
MD............  Dorchester County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.07%           1
MD............  Garrett County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.84%           1
MD............  Somerset County.....  Y.................  Y.................      43.78%      38.29%           1
MD............  St. Mary's County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.11%           1
MD............  Washington County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.41%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              MD Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           9
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MI............  Branch County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.19%           1
MI............  Chippewa County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.14%           1
MI............  Gratiot County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.45%           1
MI............  Isabella County.....  Y.................  Y.................      47.00%      42.51%           1
MI............  Luce County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.24%           1
MI............  Mecosta County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.59%           1
MI............  St. Joseph County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.93%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              MI Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           7
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MO............  Butler County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.74%           1
MO............  Crawford County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.64%           1
MO............  DeKalb County.......  Y.................  Y.................      43.09%      44.38%           1
MO............  Dunklin County......  Y.................  Y.................      49.09%      43.36%           1
MO............  Jasper County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.17%           1
MO............  Johnson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.58%           1
MO............  Madison County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.28%           1
MO............  McDonald County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.65%           1
MO............  Mississippi County..  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.60%           1
MO............  Pemiscot County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.81%      43.41%           1
MO............  Pulaski County......  Y.................  Y.................      36.00%      36.13%           1
MO............  Randolph County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.33%           1
MO............  St. Francois County.  Y.................  Y.................      49.99%      44.73%           1
MO............  Taney County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.52%           1
MO............  Washington County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.42%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              MO Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          15
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MS............  Alcorn County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.34%           1
MS............  Attala County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.63%           1
MS............  Bolivar County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.39%           1
MS............  Coahoma County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.81%           1
MS............  Covington County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.96%           1
MS............  DeSoto County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.05%           1
MS............  Forrest County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.67%      41.34%           1
MS............  Greene County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.02%           1
MS............  Hancock County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.59%           1
MS............  Harrison County.....  Y.................  Y.................      46.20%      38.30%           1
MS............  Hinds County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.89%           1
MS............  Itawamba County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.83%           1
MS............  Jackson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.18%           1
MS............  Jasper County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.45%           1
MS............  Jefferson County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.06%           1
MS............  Lafayette County....  Y.................  Y.................      47.31%      41.51%           1
MS............  Lauderdale County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.47%           1
MS............  Leake County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.01%           1
MS............  Lee County..........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.17%           1
MS............  Leflore County......  Y.................  Y.................      49.10%      42.73%           1
MS............  Lowndes County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.04%           1
MS............  Marshall County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.35%           1
MS............  Monroe County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.45%           1
MS............  Neshoba County......  Y.................  Y.................      49.06%      44.34%           1
MS............  Newton County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.20%           1
MS............  Oktibbeha County....  Y.................  Y.................      49.35%      45.11%           1
MS............  Panola County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.29%           1
MS............  Pearl River County..  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.69%           1
MS............  Pontotoc County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.57%           1
MS............  Prentiss County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.37%           1
MS............  Quitman County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.64%           1
MS............  Rankin County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.96%           1
MS............  Scott County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.49%           1
MS............  Simpson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.37%           1
MS............  Sunflower County....  Y.................  Y.................      41.61%      34.09%           1
MS............  Tate County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.08%           1
MS............  Tishomingo County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.74%           1
MS............  Tunica County.......  Y.................  Y.................      45.08%      37.83%           1
MS............  Washington County...  Y.................  Y.................      47.87%      42.71%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              MS Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          39
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MT............  Glacier County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.43%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              MT Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NC............  Anson County........  Y.................  Y.................      49.38%      42.51%           1
NC............  Avery County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.49%           1
NC............  Bertie County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.33%           1
NC............  Bladen County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.78%           1
NC............  Burke County........  Y.................  Y.................      46.56%      47.04%           1
NC............  Caldwell County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.80%           1
NC............  Caswell County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.35%           1
NC............  Chowan County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.73%      44.70%           1
NC............  Cleveland County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.04%           1
NC............  Columbus County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.88%           1
NC............  Craven County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.41%           1
NC............  Cumberland County...  Y.................  Y.................      45.77%      36.46%           1
NC............  Davidson County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.02%           1
NC............  Duplin County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.60%      44.55%           1
NC............  Edgecombe County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.73%           1
NC............  Franklin County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.15%           1
NC............  Gaston County.......  Y.................  Y.................      45.24%      42.47%           1
NC............  Gates County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.98%           1
NC............  Granville County....  Y.................  Y.................      48.35%      42.72%           1
NC............  Greene County.......  Y.................  Y.................      43.88%      43.39%           1
NC............  Halifax County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.30%      40.43%           1
NC............  Harnett County......  Y.................  Y.................      45.40%      37.76%           1
NC............  Hertford County.....  Y.................  Y.................      48.38%      47.27%           1
NC............  Hoke County.........  Y.................  Y.................      42.28%      38.16%           1
NC............  Hyde County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.67%           1
NC............  Jackson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.71%           1
NC............  Johnston County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.34%           1
NC............  Lee County..........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.89%           1
NC............  Lenoir County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.53%           1
NC............  Martin County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.71%           1
NC............  McDowell County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.42%      44.02%           1
NC............  Montgomery County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.95%           1
NC............  Nash County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.90%           1
NC............  Northampton County..  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.32%           1
NC............  Onslow County.......  Y.................  Y.................      37.64%      28.04%           1
NC............  Pasquotank County...  Y.................  Y.................      49.80%      42.07%           1
NC............  Pender County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.02%           1
NC............  Perquimans County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.23%           1
NC............  Person County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.29%           1
NC............  Pitt County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.44%           1
NC............  Randolph County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.98%           1
NC............  Richmond County.....  Y.................  Y.................      48.20%      42.09%           1
NC............  Robeson County......  Y.................  Y.................      39.12%      35.44%           1
NC............  Rockingham County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.27%           1
NC............  Rowan County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.52%           1
NC............  Rutherford County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.87%           1
NC............  Sampson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.04%           1
NC............  Scotland County.....  Y.................  Y.................      44.32%      36.64%           1
NC............  Surry County........  Y.................  Y.................      49.45%      44.88%           1
NC............  Swain County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.84%           1
NC............  Vance County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      41.84%           1
NC............  Warren County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.36%           1
NC............  Washington County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.62%           1
NC............  Wayne County........  Y.................  Y.................      49.84%      41.89%           1
NC............  Wilkes County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.28%           1
NC............  Wilson County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.26%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              NC Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          56
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ND............  Benson County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.00%      48.68%           1
ND............  Divide County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.09%           1
ND............  Rolette County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.12%           1
ND............  Sioux County........  Y.................  Y.................      44.31%      43.54%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              ND Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NE............  Thurston County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.57%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              NE Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NJ............  Cumberland County...  Y.................  Y.................      49.21%      46.56%           1
NJ............  Hudson County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.60%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              NJ Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NM............  Chaves County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.64%           1
NM............  Cibola County.......  Y.................  Y.................      39.58%      40.44%           1
NM............  Curry County........  Y.................  Y.................      46.00%      39.79%           1
NM............  Dona Ana County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.31%           1
NM............  Eddy County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.94%           1
NM............  Grant County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.96%           1
NM............  Guadalupe County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.12%           1
NM............  Hidalgo County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.17%           1
NM............  Lea County..........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      40.37%           1
NM............  Lincoln County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.12%           1
NM............  Luna County.........  Y.................  Y.................      47.89%      45.21%           1
NM............  McKinley County.....  Y.................  Y.................      45.52%      34.67%           1
NM............  Otero County........  Y.................  Y.................      49.95%      40.47%           1
NM............  Rio Arriba County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      42.57%           1
NM............  Roosevelt County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.10%           1
NM............  San Juan County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.07%           1
NM............  San Miguel County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      42.89%           1
NM............  Sierra County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.86%      45.20%           1
NM............  Taos County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.58%           1
NM............  Torrance County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.41%           1
NM............  Valencia County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.66%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              NM Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          21
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NV............  Clark County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      42.90%           1
NV............  Humboldt County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.88%           1
NV............  Lyon County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.38%           1
NV............  Pershing County.....  Y.................  Y.................      42.03%      38.00%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              NV Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NY............  Allegany County.....  Y.................  Y.................      48.61%      49.92%           1
NY............  Bronx County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      41.77%           1
NY............  Franklin County.....  Y.................  Y.................      45.30%      45.10%           1
NY............  Jefferson County....  Y.................  Y.................      45.47%      45.21%           1
NY............  Kings County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.59%           1
NY............  Orleans County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.63%           1
NY............  Queens County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.15%           1
NY............  Richmond County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.87%           1
NY............  St. Lawrence County.  Y.................  Y.................      47.87%      47.20%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              NY Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           9
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OH............  Fayette County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.93%           1
OH............  Holmes County.......  Y.................  Y.................      41.53%      36.60%           1
OH............  Madison County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.74%           1
OH............  Marion County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.92%           1
OH............  Pickaway County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.48%           1
OH............  Ross County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.82%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              OH Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           6
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK............  Adair County........  Y.................  Y.................      49.20%      41.40%           1
OK............  Atoka County........  Y.................  Y.................      45.78%      40.94%           1
OK............  Beckham County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.97%      44.20%           1
OK............  Blaine County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.10%           1
OK............  Bryan County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.27%           1
OK............  Caddo County........  Y.................  Y.................      47.99%      43.51%           1
OK............  Carter County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.31%           1
OK............  Cherokee County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.11%           1
OK............  Choctaw County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.96%           1
OK............  Cleveland County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.84%           1
OK............  Comanche County.....  Y.................  Y.................      40.97%      36.20%           1
OK............  Craig County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.43%           1
OK............  Creek County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.78%           1
OK............  Delaware County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.13%           1
OK............  Garvin County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.60%           1
OK............  Grady County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.07%           1
OK............  Greer County........  Y.................  Y.................      47.00%      44.65%           1
OK............  Hughes County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.82%      42.30%           1
OK............  Jackson County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.93%      41.87%           1
OK............  Kiowa County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.62%           1
OK............  Latimer County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.53%           1
OK............  Le Flore County.....  Y.................  Y.................      48.47%      43.18%           1
OK............  McCurtain County....  Y.................  Y.................      45.53%      42.87%           1
OK............  Muskogee County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.57%           1
OK............  Nowata County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.43%           1
OK............  Okfuskee County.....  Y.................  Y.................      47.64%      43.02%           1
OK............  Oklahoma County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.03%           1
OK............  Okmulgee County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.65%           1
OK............  Osage County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.80%           1
OK............  Ottawa County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.92%           1
OK............  Pawnee County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.73%           1
OK............  Payne County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.51%           1
OK............  Pittsburg County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.95%           1
OK............  Pontotoc County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.02%           1
OK............  Pottawatomie County.  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.29%           1
OK............  Seminole County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.16%           1
OK............  Sequoyah County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.55%      43.57%           1
OK............  Texas County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.30%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              OK Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          38
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OR............  Malheur County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.59%           1
OR............  Umatilla County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.59%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              OR Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PA............  Adams County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.89%           1
PA............  Armstrong County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.23%           1
PA............  Berks County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.30%           1
PA............  Blair County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.37%           1
PA............  Cameron County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.93%           1
PA............  Carbon County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.72%           1
PA............  Centre County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.65%           1
PA............  Clarion County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.71%           1
PA............  Clearfield County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.62%           1
PA............  Clinton County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.47%      40.57%           1
PA............  Columbia County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.38%           1
PA............  Crawford County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.16%           1
PA............  Fayette County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.98%      43.20%           1
PA............  Fulton County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.23%           1
PA............  Greene County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.64%      43.15%           1
PA............  Huntingdon County...  Y.................  Y.................      49.61%      44.84%           1
PA............  Indiana County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.88%           1
PA............  Luzerne County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.82%           1
PA............  Lycoming County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.10%           1
PA............  McKean County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.89%      45.52%           1
PA............  Mifflin County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.48%      41.90%           1
PA............  Monroe County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.99%      47.22%           1
PA............  Montour County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.57%           1
PA............  Northumberland        ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.20%           1
                 County.
PA............  Perry County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.73%           1
PA............  Schuylkill County...    ................  Y.................                  49.18%           1
PA............  Snyder County.......    ................  Y.................                  45.19%           1
PA............  Tioga County........    ................  Y.................                  47.12%           1
PA............  Union County........  Y.................  Y.................      47.45%      40.92%           1
PA............  Venango County......    ................  Y.................                  47.15%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              PA Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          30
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SC............  Abbeville County....  Y.................  Y.................      49.61%      43.07%           1
SC............  Aiken County........    ................  Y.................                  48.98%           1
SC............  Allendale County....  Y.................  Y.................      45.64%      41.12%           1
SC............  Anderson County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.67%      45.78%           1
SC............  Bamberg County......    ................  Y.................                  44.87%           1
SC............  Barnwell County.....    ................  Y.................                  49.27%           1
SC............  Berkeley County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.64%      42.85%           1
SC............  Charleston County...    ................  Y.................                  48.39%           1
SC............  Cherokee County.....  Y.................  Y.................      47.50%      42.35%           1
SC............  Chester County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.62%      42.07%           1
SC............  Chesterfield County.  Y.................  Y.................      44.48%      40.52%           1
SC............  Clarendon County....   .................  Y.................                  47.36%           1
SC............  Colleton County.....  Y.................  Y.................      48.98%      48.62%           1
SC............  Darlington County...   .................  Y.................                  44.26%           1
SC............  Dillon County.......  Y.................  Y.................      41.90%      41.64%           1
SC............  Dorchester County...   .................  Y.................                  49.83%           1
SC............  Edgefield County....   .................  Y.................                  47.61%           1
SC............  Fairfield County....   .................  Y.................                  48.72%           1
SC............  Florence County.....   .................  Y.................                  44.99%           1
SC............  Georgetown County...   .................  Y.................                  49.41%           1
SC............  Greenwood County....  Y.................  Y.................      47.27%      43.28%           1
SC............  Horry County........   .................  Y.................      48.84%      47.27%           1
SC............  Jasper County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.30%      45.15%           1
SC............  Lancaster County....  Y.................  Y.................      44.42%      45.74%           1
SC............  Laurens County......  Y.................  Y.................      45.10%      39.81%           1
SC............  Lee County..........   .................  Y.................                  45.46%           1
SC............  Marion County.......   .................  Y.................                  48.00%           1
SC............  Marlboro County.....  Y.................  Y.................      41.13%      37.22%           1
SC............  McCormick County....   .................  Y.................                  45.65%           1
SC............  Newberry County.....  Y.................  Y.................      45.19%      46.69%           1
SC............  Oconee County.......   .................  Y.................                  46.92%           1
SC............  Orangeburg County...   .................  Y.................                  48.54%           1
SC............  Pickens County......  Y.................  Y.................      46.53%      41.18%           1
SC............  Richland County.....   .................  Y.................                  49.22%           1
SC............  Spartanburg County..  Y.................  Y.................      49.65%      44.93%           1
SC............  Sumter County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.68%      41.34%           1
SC............  Union County........   .................  Y.................                  48.70%           1
SC............  Williamsburg County.   .................  Y.................                  42.78%           1
SC............  York County.........   .................  Y.................                  45.61%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              SC Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          39
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SD............  Bennett County......   .................  Y.................                  49.21%           1
SD............  Brookings County....   .................  Y.................                  49.86%           1
SD............  Buffalo County......   .................  Y.................                  34.52%           1
SD............  Clay County.........   .................  Y.................                  47.55%           1
SD............  Corson County.......   .................  Y.................                  47.03%           1
SD............  Dewey County........   .................  Y.................                  46.24%           1
SD............  Shannon County......   .................  Y.................                  28.62%           1
SD............  Todd County.........   .................  Y.................                  29.61%           1
SD............  Ziebach County......   .................  Y.................                  48.23%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
               SD Count               ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           9
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TN............  Bedford County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.07%      46.73%           1
TN............  Benton County.......   .................  Y.................                  49.17%           1
TN............  Bledsoe County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.67%      44.22%           1
TN............  Bradley County......   .................  Y.................                  44.61%           1
TN............  Campbell County.....  Y.................  Y.................      45.08%      40.63%           1
TN............  Cannon County.......   .................  Y.................                  49.45%           1
TN............  Carroll County......   .................  Y.................                  48.15%           1
TN............  Carter County.......  Y.................  Y.................      45.68%      42.99%           1
TN............  Cheatham County.....   .................  Y.................                  48.86%           1
TN............  Chester County......   .................  Y.................                  48.94%           1
TN............  Claiborne County....  Y.................  Y.................      44.30%      39.60%           1
TN............  Cocke County........  Y.................  Y.................      45.59%      39.78%           1
TN............  Davidson County.....   .................  Y.................                  49.84%           1
TN............  Decatur County......   .................  Y.................                  48.21%           1
TN............  DeKalb County.......   .................  Y.................                  47.96%           1
TN............  Dickson County......   .................  Y.................                  49.31%           1
TN............  Dyer County.........  Y.................  Y.................      49.25%      43.19%           1
TN............  Fentress County.....   .................  Y.................                  47.87%           1
TN............  Franklin County.....   .................  Y.................                  49.16%           1
TN............  Gibson County.......   .................  Y.................                  47.13%           1
TN............  Giles County........   .................  Y.................                  45.63%           1
TN............  Grainger County.....  Y.................  Y.................      44.47%      39.21%           1
TN............  Greene County.......  Y.................  Y.................      47.93%      43.00%           1
TN............  Grundy County.......  Y.................  Y.................      44.98%      42.94%           1
TN............  Hamblen County......   .................  Y.................                  46.28%           1
TN............  Hancock County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.71%      39.81%           1
TN............  Hardeman County.....  Y.................  Y.................      48.60%      41.43%           1
TN............  Hardin County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.84%      44.73%           1
TN............  Hawkins County......  Y.................  Y.................      46.89%      41.73%           1
TN............  Haywood County......   .................  Y.................                  45.28%           1
TN............  Henderson County....   .................  Y.................                  43.66%           1
TN............  Hickman County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.82%      43.44%           1
TN............  Humphreys County....   .................  Y.................                  49.19%           1
TN............  Jefferson County....  Y.................  Y.................      45.91%      41.79%           1
TN............  Johnson County......  Y.................  Y.................      43.78%      40.39%           1
TN............  Lake County.........   .................  Y.................                  34.27%           1
TN............  Lauderdale County...  Y.................  Y.................      42.73%      37.58%           1
TN............  Lawrence County.....   .................  Y.................                  49.39%           1
TN............  Lincoln County......   .................  Y.................                  44.79%           1
TN............  Macon County........  Y.................  Y.................      46.98%      43.83%           1
TN............  Marion County.......   .................  Y.................                  48.56%           1
TN............  Marshall County.....   .................  Y.................                  47.67%           1
TN............  Maury County........   .................  Y.................                  46.42%           1
TN............  McMinn County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.00%      44.95%           1
TN............  McNairy County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.19%           1
TN............  Meigs County........  Y.................  Y.................      46.64%      40.81%           1
TN............  Monroe County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.94%      44.64%           1
TN............  Montgomery County...  Y.................  Y.................      48.73%      41.49%           1
TN............  Morgan County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.54%      40.59%           1
TN............  Overton County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.75%           1
TN............  Perry County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.85%           1
TN............  Polk County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.37%           1
TN............  Putnam County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.54%           1
TN............  Rhea County.........  Y.................  Y.................      48.36%      45.45%           1
TN............  Rutherford County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.70%           1
TN............  Scott County........  Y.................  Y.................      46.82%      42.42%           1
TN............  Sequatchie County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.75%           1
TN............  Sevier County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.74%           1
TN............  Sullivan County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.86%           1
TN............  Tipton County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.84%           1
TN............  Unicoi County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.17%           1
TN............  Union County........  Y.................  Y.................      45.85%      44.14%           1
TN............  Warren County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.18%      46.73%           1
TN............  Washington County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.54%           1
TN............  Wayne County........  Y.................  Y.................      44.24%      40.18%           1
TN............  Weakley County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.95%           1
TN............  White County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.21%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              TN Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          67
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TX............  Anderson County.....  Y.................  Y.................      38.31%      35.28%           1
TX............  Andrews County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.67%           1
TX............  Angelina County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.12%           1
TX............  Aransas County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.72%           1
TX............  Atascosa County.....  Y.................  Y.................      41.68%      42.10%           1
TX............  Bastrop County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.93%      47.40%           1
TX............  Bee County..........  Y.................  Y.................      38.19%      33.90%           1
TX............  Bell County.........  Y.................  Y.................      48.23%      39.22%           1
TX............  Bexar County........  Y.................  Y.................      47.60%      44.77%           1
TX............  Bowie County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.67%           1
TX............  Brazoria County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.37%           1
TX............  Brazos County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.16%      42.97%           1
TX............  Brooks County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.40%           1
TX............  Brown County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.14%           1
TX............  Burleson County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.74%           1
TX............  Caldwell County.....  Y.................  Y.................      45.59%      42.43%           1
TX............  Calhoun County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.61%           1
TX............  Cameron County......  Y.................  Y.................      35.61%      35.53%           1
TX............  Camp County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.71%           1
TX............  Cass County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.49%           1
TX............  Castro County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.86%           1
TX............  Cherokee County.....  Y.................  Y.................      47.84%      45.33%           1
TX............  Childress County....  Y.................  Y.................      37.92%      36.52%           1
TX............  Concho County.......  Y.................  Y.................      37.68%      33.90%           1
TX............  Coryell County......  Y.................  Y.................      32.80%      28.14%           1
TX............  Crosby County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      42.00%           1
TX............  Culberson County....  Y.................  ..................      46.90%  ..........           1
TX............  Dallam County.......  Y.................  Y.................      45.90%      44.40%           1
TX............  Dallas County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.29%           1
TX............  Dawson County.......  Y.................  Y.................      43.23%      44.34%           1
TX............  Deaf Smith County...  Y.................  Y.................      47.15%      44.28%           1
TX............  Delta County........  Y.................  Y.................      49.21%      48.02%           1
TX............  DeWitt County.......  Y.................  Y.................      43.60%      41.23%           1
TX............  Dickens County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.01%      39.52%           1
TX............  Duval County........  Y.................  ..................      47.70%  ..........           1
TX............  Eastland County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.07%      46.96%           1
TX............  Ector County........  Y.................  Y.................      45.71%      42.47%           1
TX............  El Paso County......  Y.................  Y.................      43.40%      39.27%           1
TX............  Erath County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.15%           1
TX............  Falls County........  Y.................  Y.................      46.71%      43.93%           1
TX............  Fannin County.......  Y.................  Y.................      47.96%      44.39%           1
TX............  Floyd County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.31%           1
TX............  Foard County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.80%           1
TX............  Freestone County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.59%           1
TX............  Frio County.........  Y.................  Y.................      34.60%      37.02%           1
TX............  Gaines County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.57%      42.28%           1
TX............  Gonzales County.....  Y.................  Y.................      46.95%      49.53%           1
TX............  Gray County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.72%           1
TX............  Grayson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.77%           1
TX............  Gregg County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.29%           1
TX............  Grimes County.......  Y.................  Y.................      43.33%      39.89%           1
TX............  Hale County.........  Y.................  Y.................      43.31%      38.06%           1
TX............  Hall County.........  Y.................  ..................      48.48%  ..........           1
TX............  Hardeman County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.63%           1
TX............  Harris County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.61%           1
TX............  Hartley County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.12%           1
TX............  Hays County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.49%           1
TX............  Henderson County....  Y.................  Y.................      48.97%      47.66%           1
TX............  Hidalgo County......  Y.................  Y.................      36.31%      37.42%           1
TX............  Hill County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.79%           1
TX............  Hockley County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.05%      43.53%           1
TX............  Hopkins County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.36%           1
TX............  Houston County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.52%           1
TX............  Howard County.......  Y.................  Y.................      43.64%      39.65%           1
TX............  Hunt County.........  Y.................  Y.................      47.84%      45.17%           1
TX............  Jack County.........  Y.................  Y.................      45.46%      45.26%           1
TX............  Jackson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.72%           1
TX............  Jasper County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.72%      45.64%           1
TX............  Jefferson County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.65%           1
TX............  Jim Wells County....  Y.................  Y.................      45.12%      45.62%           1
TX............  Johnson County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.14%      44.58%           1
TX............  Jones County........  Y.................  Y.................      38.22%      37.77%           1
TX............  Karnes County.......  Y.................  Y.................      40.07%      36.77%           1
TX............  Kaufman County......  Y.................  Y.................      49.73%      47.58%           1
TX............  Kleberg County......  Y.................  Y.................      45.61%      41.91%           1
TX............  La Salle County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.78%           1
TX............  Lamar County........  Y.................  Y.................      47.69%      43.70%           1
TX............  Lamb County.........  Y.................  Y.................      42.59%      46.66%           1
TX............  Lampasas County.....  Y.................  ..................      48.73%  ..........           1
TX............  Liberty County......  Y.................  Y.................      41.41%      41.33%           1
TX............  Limestone County....  Y.................  Y.................      47.99%      45.22%           1
TX............  Live Oak County.....  Y.................  Y.................      46.08%      42.46%           1
TX............  Lubbock County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.03%           1
TX............  Lynn County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.27%           1
TX............  Madison County......  Y.................  Y.................      42.13%      36.84%           1
TX............  Marion County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.50%           1
TX............  Matagorda County....  Y.................  ..................      49.30%  ..........           1
TX............  Maverick County.....  Y.................  Y.................      44.23%      45.29%           1
TX............  McCulloch County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.58%           1
TX............  McLennan County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.24%           1
TX............  Medina County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.03%      47.38%           1
TX............  Milam County........  Y.................  Y.................      49.28%      48.77%           1
TX............  Mitchell County.....  Y.................  Y.................      34.85%      33.85%           1
TX............  Moore County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.79%           1
TX............  Nacogdoches County..  Y.................  Y.................      49.43%      46.27%           1
TX............  Navarro County......  Y.................  Y.................      49.73%      46.19%           1
TX............  Newton County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.04%           1
TX............  Nolan County........  Y.................  Y.................      48.93%      47.06%           1
TX............  Nueces County.......  Y.................  Y.................      48.03%      45.26%           1
TX............  Orange County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.55%           1
TX............  Palo Pinto County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.02%           1
TX............  Parmer County.......  Y.................  Y.................      47.84%      48.05%           1
TX............  Pecos County........  Y.................  Y.................      42.17%      39.26%           1
TX............  Potter County.......  Y.................  Y.................      36.91%      33.34%           1
TX............  Rains County........  Y.................  Y.................      47.88%      48.78%           1
TX............  Red River County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.62%           1
TX............  Reeves County.......  Y.................  Y.................      44.61%      38.62%           1
TX............  Runnels County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.77%           1
TX............  Rusk County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.46%           1
TX............  San Jacinto County..  Y.................  Y.................      44.38%      47.40%           1
TX............  San Patricio County.  Y.................  Y.................      45.54%      41.28%           1
TX............  Scurry County.......  Y.................  Y.................      46.76%      44.53%           1
TX............  Smith County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.92%           1
TX............  Starr County........  Y.................  Y.................      38.83%      37.44%           1
TX............  Stephens County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.03%           1
TX............  Swisher County......  Y.................  Y.................      38.55%      43.25%           1
TX............  Taylor County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.66%           1
TX............  Terry County........  Y.................  Y.................      46.92%      46.48%           1
TX............  Titus County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.22%           1
TX............  Tom Green County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.83%           1
TX............  Tyler County........  Y.................  Y.................      48.69%      44.76%           1
TX............  Uvalde County.......  Y.................  ..................      49.94%  ..........           1
TX............  Val Verde County....  Y.................  Y.................      44.19%      46.12%           1
TX............  Victoria County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.64%      47.47%           1
TX............  Walker County.......  Y.................  Y.................      35.90%      29.22%           1
TX............  Waller County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.50%           1
TX............  Webb County.........  Y.................  Y.................      40.39%      34.47%           1
TX............  Wharton County......  Y.................  Y.................      49.52%      48.34%           1
TX............  Wichita County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.94%      44.71%           1
TX............  Wilbarger County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.72%           1
TX............  Willacy County......  Y.................  Y.................      39.47%      40.42%           1
TX............  Winkler County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.81%      46.74%           1
TX............  Wise County.........  Y.................  Y.................      49.86%      48.59%           1
TX............  Wood County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.37%           1
TX............  Zapata County.......  Y.................  Y.................      40.62%      39.42%           1
TX............  Zavala County.......  Y.................  Y.................      43.84%      48.52%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              TX Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........         136
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UT............  Tooele County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.86%           1
UT............  Weber County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.91%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              UT Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VA............  Accomack County.....  Y.................  Y.................      46.02%      42.82%           1
VA............  Amherst County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.39%           1
VA............  Bedford city........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.53%           1
VA............  Bland County........  Y.................  Y.................      49.45%      48.55%           1
VA............  Bristol city........  Y.................  Y.................      48.96%      45.53%           1
VA............  Brunswick County....  Y.................  Y.................      47.85%      41.15%           1
VA............  Buchanan County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.15%      46.72%           1
VA............  Buckingham County...  Y.................  Y.................      48.06%      45.21%           1
VA............  Buena Vista city....  Y.................  Y.................      48.79%      40.05%           1
VA............  Carroll County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.81%           1
VA............  Charlottesville city  ..................  Y.................  ..........      36.21%           1
VA............  Clifton Forge city..  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.18%           1
VA............  Covington city......  Y.................  Y.................      48.62%      45.33%           1
VA............  Culpeper County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.41%           1
VA............  Danville city.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.78%           1
VA............  Dinwiddie County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.39%           1
VA............  Fredericksburg city.  Y.................  Y.................      48.80%      43.77%           1
VA............  Galax city..........  Y.................  Y.................      49.82%      46.24%           1
VA............  Grayson County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.94%           1
VA............  Greene County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.31%           1
VA............  Greensville County..  Y.................  Y.................      44.32%      41.33%           1
VA............  Halifax County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.53%           1
VA............  Hampton city........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.97%           1
VA............  Harrisonburg city...  Y.................  Y.................      34.37%      31.35%           1
VA............  Henry County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.02%           1
VA............  Hopewell city.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.53%      43.11%           1
VA............  King George County..  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.55%           1
VA............  Lee County..........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.08%           1
VA............  Lexington city......  Y.................  Y.................      37.45%      35.55%           1
VA............  Lunenburg County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.93%           1
VA............  Lynchburg city......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.32%           1
VA............  Manassas Park city..  ..................  Y.................  ..........      41.80%           1
VA............  Martinsville city...  Y.................  Y.................      48.99%      48.57%           1
VA............  Mecklenburg County..  Y.................  Y.................      49.98%      46.38%           1
VA............  Montgomery County...  Y.................  Y.................      45.69%      41.23%           1
VA............  Newport News city...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.41%           1
VA............  Norfolk city........  Y.................  Y.................      40.43%      35.77%           1
VA............  Norton city.........  ..................  Y.................      48.94%  ..........           1
VA............  Nottoway County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.97%           1
VA............  Page County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.07%           1
VA............  Patrick County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.31%           1
VA............  Petersburg city.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.57%      44.14%           1
VA............  Portsmouth city.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.80%           1
VA............  Prince Edward County  Y.................  Y.................      45.33%      40.80%           1
VA............  Prince George County  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.51%           1
VA............  Pulaski County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.56%           1
VA............  Radford city........  Y.................  Y.................      38.30%      32.69%           1
VA............  Richmond city.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.90%           1
VA............  Richmond County.....  Y.................  Y.................      44.99%      41.59%           1
VA............  Roanoke city........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.55%           1
VA............  Rockbridge County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.83%           1
VA............  Rockingham County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.23%           1
VA............  Russell County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.31%           1
VA............  Smyth County........  Y.................  Y.................      48.33%      45.36%           1
VA............  Southampton County..  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.80%           1
VA............  Staunton city.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.92%           1
VA............  Sussex County.......  Y.................  Y.................      45.85%      39.15%           1
VA............  Tazewell County.....  Y.................  Y.................      49.49%      46.92%           1
VA............  Warren County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.00%           1
VA............  Waynesboro city.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.61%           1
VA............  Westmoreland County.  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.52%           1
VA............  Williamsburg city...  Y.................  Y.................      42.82%      35.54%           1
VA............  Winchester city.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.44%           1
VA............  Wise County.........  Y.................  Y.................      43.62%      43.19%           1
VA............  Wythe County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.32%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              VA Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          65
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WI............  Menominee County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.15%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              WI Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WV............  Berkeley County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      41.19%           1
WV............  Boone County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.73%           1
WV............  Braxton County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.85%           1
WV............  Brooke County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.57%           1
WV............  Cabell County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      41.82%           1
WV............  Calhoun County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.49%           1
WV............  Clay County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.54%           1
WV............  Fayette County......  Y.................  Y.................      45.51%      39.40%           1
WV............  Gilmer County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.33%      48.34%           1
WV............  Greenbrier County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.47%           1
WV............  Hampshire County....  Y.................  Y.................      48.26%      40.32%           1
WV............  Hardy County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.61%           1
WV............  Jefferson County....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      45.23%           1
WV............  Kanawha County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.97%           1
WV............  Lewis County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.71%           1
WV............  Lincoln County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.95%      44.10%           1
WV............  Logan County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.19%           1
WV............  Marshall County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.35%           1
WV............  McDowell County.....  Y.................  Y.................      38.19%      34.90%           1
WV............  Mercer County.......  Y.................  Y.................      45.53%      38.07%           1
WV............  Mineral County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.32%           1
WV............  Mingo County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.98%           1
WV............  Monongalia County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      42.03%           1
WV............  Monroe County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      44.16%           1
WV............  Nicholas County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      42.19%           1
WV............  Ohio County.........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.45%           1
WV............  Pocahontas County...  ..................  Y.................  ..........      48.21%           1
WV............  Preston County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.77%           1
WV............  Raleigh County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.72%      38.98%           1
WV............  Randolph County.....  ..................  Y.................  ..........      43.62%           1
WV............  Ritchie County......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.87%           1
WV............  Roane County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      47.64%           1
WV............  Summers County......  Y.................  Y.................      48.11%      45.70%           1
WV............  Taylor County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.18%           1
WV............  Upshur County.......  Y.................  Y.................      49.35%      44.98%           1
WV............  Wayne County........  ..................  Y.................  ..........      49.53%           1
WV............  Webster County......  Y.................  Y.................      47.90%      44.22%           1
WV............  Wetzel County.......  ..................  Y.................  ..........      46.67%           1
WV............  Wyoming County......  Y.................  Y.................      44.64%      39.54%           1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              WV Count                ..................  ..................  ..........  ..........          39
================================================================================================================
        Total Counties Covered Under Proposed Formula.......................                                1010
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


 XII. Additional Views of Mr. Leahy, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Biden, Mr. Kohl, 
Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Feingold, Mr. Schumer and Mr. Durbin in Support of 
                                S. 2703

    We object and do not subscribe to this Committee Report on 
S. 2703, the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments 
Act (VRARA), which by including Additional Views signed by the 
Chairman, has become a very different document than the draft 
Report circulated by the Chairman on July 24, 2006. As sponsors 
of the Senate legislation who have supported it, pressed for 
its enactment and voted for it, we must register our 
disappointment that this Report does not reflect our views or 
those of scores of other cosponsors, does not properly describe 
the record supporting our bill, and does not fully endorse the 
bill we introduced and sponsored and that we and all Members of 
the Committee voted to report favorably to the Senate. Although 
the Senate Committee Report filed today does not make any 
findings based on the extensive record created in both the 
House and Senate, those findings can be found in the text of 
the legislation itself. We submit these additional views to 
note for the record the unique procedural posture of the 
Committee's actions today.
    On July 19, 2006, the Committee debated and voted on two 
amendments to the VRARA.\1\ No other amendments were offered 
and there was no further clarifying debate during this session. 
Then, the Committee unanimously voted to report the legislation 
favorably to the full Senate. The following day, on July 20, 
2006, the full Senate debated H.R. 9,\2\ the companion bill 
that had been passed by the House of Representatives. No 
amendments were offered and the Senate voted 98-0 for final 
passage.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Senator Coburn offered the only substantive amendment in the 
Senate Judiciary Committee. His amendment related to Section 203 of the 
Voting Rights Act. It was debated and then defeated by a voice vote. 
Senator Leahy offered an amendment to add the name of Cesar Chavez to 
the short title, which was adopted.
    \2\ The House and the Senate legislation are virtually identical. 
The only difference between them reflects an amendment adopted in the 
House Judiciary Committee to order a study about Section 203 and an 
amendment adopted in the Senate Judiciary Committee to add the name of 
Cesar Chavez to the short title.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Senate Judiciary Committee Report on the VRARA is being 
filed close to a week after the Senate unanimously passed its 
companion bill, H.R. 9.
    At the time of floor debate and consideration of final 
passage of H.R. 9 in the Senate, Senators had the following to 
inform their vote: the extensive Senate Judiciary Committee 
record, including thousands of pages of testimony; the full 
record before the House of Representatives, including thousands 
of pages of testimony; the House Committee Report; and the full 
debate on the floor of the House of Representatives, including 
debate surrounding four substantive amendments to H.R. 9 that 
were all rejected. Most importantly, at the time they voted, 
all Senators had before them the detailed findings in Section 2 
of the legislation.\3\ These findings are identical in H.R. 9 
and S. 2703 and, as reauthorization measures, both incorporated 
the statutory findings within the following provisions of the 
Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 203(a); \4\ Section 4(f)(1); 
\5\ Section 10(a); \6\ and Section 202(a).\7\ At the time of 
floor debate and consideration of H.R. 9 in the Senate, no 
draft Senate Committee Report was available to Senators.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ See, e.g., ``Evidence of continued discrimination includes * * 
* the hundreds of objections interposed, requests for more information 
submitted followed by voting changes withdrawn from consideration by 
jurisdictions covered by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and section 5 
enforcement actions undertaken by the Department of Justice in covered 
jurisdictions since 1982 that prevented election practices, such as 
annexation, at-large voting, and the use of multi-member districts, 
from being enacted to dilute minority voting strength; * * * the number 
of requests for declaratory judgments denied by the United States 
District Court for the District of Columbia; * * * the continued filing 
of section 2 cases that originated in covered jurisdictions; and * * * 
the litigation pursued by the Department of Justice since 1982 to 
enforce sections 4(e), 4(f)(4), and 203 of such Act to ensure that all 
language minority citizens have full access to the political process.'' 
Section 2(b)(4). See also Section 2(b)(3) (``The continued evidence of 
racially polarized voting in each of the jurisdictions covered by the 
expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 demonstrates that 
racial and language minorities remain politically vulnerable, 
warranting the continued protection of the Voting Rights Act of 
1965.'').
    \4\ The Congress finds that, through the use of various practices 
and procedures, citizens of language minorities have been effectively 
excluded from participation in the electoral process. Among other 
factors, the denial of the right to vote of such minority group 
citizens is ordinarily directly related to the unequal educational 
opportunities afforded them, resulting in high illiteracy and low 
voting participation. The Congress declares that, in order to enforce 
the guarantees of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the United 
States Constitution, it is necessary to eliminate such discrimination 
by prohibiting these practices, and by prescribing other remedial 
devices. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1973aa-1a(a).
    \5\ The Congress finds that voting discrimination against citizens 
of language minorities is pervasive and national in scope. Such 
minority citizens are from environments in which the dominant language 
is other than English. In addition they have been denied equal 
educational opportunities by State and local governments, resulting in 
severe disabilities and continuing illiteracy in the English language. 
The Congress further finds that, where State and local officials 
conduct elections only in English, language minority citizens are 
excluded from participating in the electoral process. In many areas of 
the country, this exclusion is aggravated by acts of physical, 
economic, and political intimidation. The Congress declares that, in 
order to enforce the guarantees of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
amendments to the United States Constitution, it is necessary to 
eliminate such discrimination by prohibiting English-only elections, 
and by prescribing other remedial devices. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1973b(f)(1).
    \6\ 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1973h(a).
    \7\ 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1973aa-1(a).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    By voting to pass the legislation, Congress has adopted and 
reaffirmed the detailed findings in H.R. 9. The Senate 
unanimously adopted these findings. Nothing written by a Member 
of Congress after final passage can diminish the force of those 
findings contained within the enacted legislation itself or the 
Member's vote supporting them. As several courts have 
suggested, post-passage legislative history is a contradiction 
in terms. Any after-the-fact attempts to re-characterize the 
legislation's language and effects should not be credited.
                                   Patrick J. Leahy.
                                   Edward M. Kennedy.
                                   Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
                                   Herbert Kohl.
                                   Dianne Feinstein.
                                   Russell D. Feingold.
                                   Charles E. Schumer.
                                   Richard J. Durbin.

      XIII. Changes in Existing Law Made by the Bill, as Reported

    Changes in existing law made by the bill, as reported, are 
shown as follows (existing law proposed to be omitted is 
enclosed in black brackets, new matter is printed in italic, 
existing law in which no change is proposed is shown in roman):

                       VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965

TITLE I--VOTING RIGHTS

           *       *       *       *       *       *       *


    Sec. 3. (a) Whenever the Attorney General or an aggrieved 
person institutes a proceeding under any statute to enforce the 
voting guarantees of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment in 
any State or political subdivision the court shall authorize 
the appointment of Federal [examiners] observers by the 
Director of the Office of Personnel Management in accordance 
with section 6 to serve for such period of time and for such 
political subdivisions as the court shall determine is 
appropriate to enforce the voting guarantees of the fourteenth 
or fifteenth amendment (1) as part of any interlocutory order 
if the court determines that the appointment of such 
[examiners] observers is necessary to enforce such voting 
guarantees or (2) as part of any final judgment if the court 
finds that violations of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment 
justifying equitable relief have occurred in such State or 
subdivision: Provided, That the court need not authorize the 
appointment of [examiners] observers if any incidents of denial 
or abridgement of the right to vote on account of race or 
color, or in contravention of the voting guarantees set forth 
in section 4(f)(2) (1) have been few in number and have been 
promptly and effectively corrected by State or local action, 
(2) the continuing effect of such incidents has been 
eliminated, and (3) there is no reasonable probability of their 
recurrence in the future.

           *       *       *       *       *       *       *

    Sec. 4. (a)(1) To assure that the right of citizens of the 
United States to vote is not denied or abridged on account of 
race or color, no citizen shall be denied the right to vote in 
any Federal, State, or local election because of his failure to 
comply with any test or device in any State with respect to 
which the determinations have been made under the first two 
sentences of subsection (b) of this section or in any political 
subdivision of such State (as such subdivision existed on the 
date such determinations were made with respect to such State), 
though such determinations were not made with respect to such 
subdivision as a separate unit, or in any political subdivision 
with respect to which such determinations have been made as a 
separate unit, unless the United States District Court for the 
District of Columbia issues a declaratory judgment under this 
section. No citizen shall be denied the right to vote in any 
Federal, State, or local election because of his failure to 
comply with any test or device in any State with respect to 
which the determinations have been made under the third 
sentence of subsection (b) of this section or in any political 
subdivision of such State (as such subdivision existed on the 
date such determinations were made with respect to such State), 
though such determinations were not made with respect to such 
subdivision as a separate unit, or in any political subdivision 
with respect to which such determinations have been made as a 
separate unit, unless the United States District Court for the 
District of Columbia issues a declaratory judgment under this 
section. A declaratory judgment under this section shall issue 
only if such court determines that during the ten years 
preceding the filing of the action, and during the pendency of 
such action--
          (A) * * *

           *       *       *       *       *       *       *

          (C) no Federal examiners or observers under this Act 
        have been assigned to such State or political 
        subdivision;

           *       *       *       *       *       *       *

    (7) The Congress shall reconsider the provisions of this 
section at the end of the fifteen-year period following the 
effective date of the amendments made by the [Voting Rights Act 
Amendments of 1982] Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott 
King, and Cesar E. Chavez Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and 
Amendments Act of 2006.
    (8) The provisions of this section shall expire at the end 
of the 25-year period following the effective date of the 
amendments made by the [Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1982] 
Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, and Cesar E. 
Chavez Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 
2006.

           *       *       *       *       *       *       *

    (b) The provisions of subsection (a) of this section shall 
apply in any State or in any political subdivision of a State 
which (1) the Attorney General determines maintained on 
November 1, 1964, any test or device, and with respect to which 
(2) the Director of the Census determines that less than 50 per 
centum of the persons of voting age residing therein were 
registered on November 1, 1964, or that less than 50 per centum 
of such persons voted in the presidential election of November 
1964. On and after August 6, 1970, in addition to any State or 
political subdivision of a State determined to be subject to 
subsection (a) of this section pursuant to the previous 
sentence, the provisions of subsection (a) of this section 
shall apply in any State or any political subdivision of a 
State which (i) the Attorney General determines maintained on 
November 1, 1968, any test or device, and with respect to which 
(ii) the Director of the Census determines that less than 50 
per centum of the persons of voting age residing therein were 
registered on November 1, 1968, or that less than 50 per centum 
of such persons voted in the presidential election of November 
1968. On and after August 6, 1975, in addition to any State or 
political subdivision of a State determined to be subject to 
subsection (a) of this section pursuant to the previous two 
sentences, the provisions of subsection (a) of this section 
shall apply in any State or any political subdivision of a 
State which (i) the Attorney General determines maintained on 
November 1, 1972, any test or device, and with respect to which 
(ii) the Director of the Census determines that less than 50 
per centum of the citizens of voting age were registered on 
November 1, 1972, or that less than 50 per centum of such 
persons voted in the Presidential election of November 1972.
    A determination or certification of the Attorney General or 
of the Director of the Census under this section or under 
[section 6] section 8 or 13 shall not be reviewable in any 
court and shall be effective upon publication in the Federal 
Register.

           *       *       *       *       *       *       *

    Sec. 5. (a) Whenever a State or political subdivision with 
respect to which the prohibitions set forth in section 4(a) 
based upon determinations made under the first sentence of 
section 4(b) are in effect shall enact or seek to administer 
any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or 
standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting 
different from that in force or effect on November 1, 1964, or 
whenever a State or political subdivision with respect to which 
the prohibitions set forth in section 4(a) based upon 
determinations made under the second sentence of section 4(b) 
are in effect shall enact or seek to administer any voting 
qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, 
or procedure with respect to voting different from that in 
force or effect on November 1, 1968, or whenever a State or 
political subdivision with respect to which the prohibitions 
set forth in section 4(a) based upon determinations made under 
the third sentence of section 4(b) are in effect shall enact or 
seek to administer any voting qualification or prerequisite to 
voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to 
voting different from that in force or effect on November 1, 
1972, such State or subdivision may institute an action in the 
United States District Court for the District of Columbia for a 
declaratory judgment that such qualification, prerequisite, 
standard, practice, or procedure [does not have the purpose and 
will not have the effect] neither has the purpose nor will have 
the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account 
of race or color, or in contravention of the guarantees set 
forth in section 4(f)(2), and unless and until the court enters 
such judgment no person shall be denied the right to vote for 
failure to comply with such qualification, prerequisite, 
standard, practice, or procedure: Provided, That such 
qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure 
may be enforced without such proceeding if the qualification, 
prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure has been 
submitted by the chief legal officer or other appropriate 
official of such State or subdivision to the Attorney General 
and the Attorney General has not interposed an objection within 
sixty days after such submission, or upon good cause shown, to 
facilitate an expedited approval within sixty days after such 
submission, the Attorney General has affirmatively indicated 
that such objection will not be made. Neither an affirmative 
indication by the Attorney General that no objection will be 
made, nor the Attorney General's failure to object, nor a 
declaratory judgment entered under this section shall bar a 
subsequent action to enjoin enforcement of such qualification, 
prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure. In the event 
the Attorney General affirmatively indicates that no objection 
will be made within the sixty-day period following receipt of a 
submission, the Attorney General may reserve the right to 
reexamine the submission if additional information comes to his 
attention during the remainder of the sixty-day period which 
would otherwise require objection in accordance with this 
section. Any action under this section shall be heard and 
determined by a court of three judges in accordance with the 
provisions of section 2284 of Title 28 and any appeal shall lie 
to the Supreme Court.
    (b) Any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or 
standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting that 
has the purpose of or will have the effect of diminishing the 
ability of any citizens of the United States on account of race 
or color, or in contravention of the guarantees set forth in 
section 4(f)(2), to elect their preferred candidates of choice 
denies or abridges the right to vote within the meaning of 
subsection (a) of this section.
    (c) The term ``purpose'' in subsections (a) and (b) of this 
section shall include any discriminatory purpose.
    (d) The purpose of subsection (b) of this section is to 
protect the ability of such citizens to elect their preferred 
candidates of choice.
    [Sec. 6. Whenever (a) a court has authorized the 
appointment of examiners pursuant to the provisions of section 
3(a), or (b) unless a declaratory judgment has been rendered 
under section 4(a), the Attorney General certifies with respect 
to any political subdivision named in, or included within the 
scope of, determinations made under section 4(b) that (1) he 
has received complaints in writing from twenty or more 
residents of such political subdivision alleging that they have 
been denied the right to vote under color of law on account of 
race or color, or in contravention of the guarantees set forth 
in section 4(f)(2), and that he believes such complaints to be 
meritorious, or (2) that in his judgment (considering, among 
other factors, whether the ratio of nonwhite persons to white 
persons registered to vote within such subdivision appears to 
him to be reasonably attributable to violations of the 
fourteenth or fifteenth amendment or whether substantial 
evidence exists that bona fide efforts are being made within 
such subdivision to comply with the fourteenth or fifteenth 
amendment), the appointment of examiners is otherwise necessary 
to enforce the guarantees of the fourteenth or fifteenth 
amendment, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management 
shall appoint as many examiners for such subdivision as the 
Director may deem appropriate to prepare and maintain lists of 
persons eligible to vote in Federal, State, and local 
elections. Such examiners, hearing officers provided for in 
section 9(a) and other persons deemed necessary by the Director 
to carry out the provisions and purposes of this Act shall be 
appointed, compensated, and separated without regard to the 
provisions of any statute administered by the Director of the 
Office of Personnel Management, and service under this Act 
shall not be considered employment for the purposes of any 
statute administered by the Director of the Office of Personnel 
Management, except the provisions of subchapter III of chapter 
73 of title 5, United States Code, relating to political 
activities: Provided, That the Director is authorized, after 
consulting the head of the appropriate department or agency, to 
designate suitable persons in the official service of the 
United States, with their consent, to serve in these positions. 
Examiners and hearing officers shall have the power to 
administer oaths.
    [Sec. 7. (a) The examiners for each political subdivision 
shall, at such places as the Director of the Office of 
Personnel Management shall by regulation designate, examine 
applicants concerning their qualifications for voting. An 
application to an examiner shall be in such form as the 
Director may require and shall contain allegations that the 
applicant is not otherwise registered to vote.
    [(b) Any person whom the examiner finds, in accordance with 
instructions received under Section 9(b), to have the 
qualifications prescribed by State law not inconsistent with 
the Constitution and laws of the United States shall promptly 
be placed on a list of eligible voters. A challenge to such 
listing may be made in accordance with Section 9(a) and shall 
not be the basis for a prosecution under Section 12. The 
examiner shall certify and transmit such list, and any 
supplements as appropriate, at least once a month, to the 
offices of the appropriate election officials, with copies to 
the Attorney General and the attorney general of the State, and 
any such lists and supplements thereto transmitted during the 
month shall be available for public inspection on the last 
business day of the month and in any event not later than the 
forty-fifth day prior to any election. The appropriate State or 
local election official shall place such names on the official 
voting list. Any person whose name appears on the examiner's 
list shall be entitled and allowed to vote in the election 
district of his residence unless and until the appropriate 
election officials shall have been notified that such person 
has been removed from such list in accordance with subsection 
(d) of this section: Provided, That no person shall be entitled 
to vote in any election by virtue of this Act unless his name 
shall have been certified and transmitted on such a list to the 
offices of the appropriate election officials at least forty-
five days prior to such election.
    [(c) The examiner shall issue to each person whose name 
appears on such a list a certificate evidencing his eligibility 
to vote.
    [(d) A person whose name appears on such a list shall be 
removed therefrom by an examiner if (1) such person has been 
successfully challenged in accordance with the procedure 
prescribed in section 9, or (2) he has been determined by an 
examiner to have lost his eligibility to vote under State law 
not inconsistent with the Constitution and the laws of the 
United States.
    [Sec. 8. Whenever an examiner is serving under this Act in 
any political subdivision, the Director of the Office of 
Personnel Management may assign, at the request of the Attorney 
General, one or more persons, who may be officers of the United 
States, (1) to enter and attend at any place for holding an 
election in such subdivision for the purpose of observing 
whether persons who are entitled to vote are being permitted to 
vote, and (2) to enter and attend at any place for tabulating 
the votes cast at any election held in such subdivision for the 
purpose of observing whether votes cast by persons entitled to 
vote are being properly tabulated. Such persons so assigned 
shall report to an examiner appointed for such political 
subdivision, to the Attorney General, and if the appointment of 
examiners has been authorized pursuant to Section 3(a), to the 
court.
    [Sec. 9. (a) Any challenge to a listing on an eligibility 
list prepared by an examiner shall be heard and determined by a 
hearing officer appointed by and responsible to the Director of 
the Office of Personnel Management and under such rules as the 
Director shall by regulation prescribe. Such challenge shall be 
entertained only if filed at such office within the State as 
the Director of the Office of Personnel Management shall by 
regulation designate, and within ten days after the listing of 
the challenged person is made available for public inspection, 
and if supported by (1) the affidavits of at least two persons 
having personal knowledge of the facts constituting grounds for 
the challenge, and (2) a certification that a copy of the 
challenge and affidavits have been served by mail or in person 
upon the person challenged at his place of residence set out in 
the application. Such challenge shall be determined within 
fifteen days after it has been filed. A petition for review of 
the decision of the hearing officer may be filed in the United 
States court of appeals for the circuit in which the person 
challenged resides within fifteen days after service of such 
decision by mail on the person petitioning for review but no 
decision of a hearing officer shall be reversed unless clearly 
erroneous. Any person listed shall be entitled and allowed to 
vote pending final determination by the hearing officer and by 
the court.
    [(b) The times, places, procedures, and form for 
application and listing pursuant to this Act and removals from 
the eligibility lists shall be prescribed by regulations 
promulgated by the Director of the Office of Personnel 
Management and the Director shall, after consultation with the 
Attorney General, instruct examiners concerning applicable 
State law not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of 
the United States with respect to (1) the qualifications 
required for listing, and (2) loss of eligibility to vote.
    [(c) Upon the request of the applicant or the challenger or 
on its own motion the Director of the Office of Personnel 
Management shall have the power to require by subpoena the 
attendance and testimony of witnesses and the production of 
documentary evidence relating to any matter pending before the 
Director under the authority of this Section. In case of 
contumacy or refusal to obey a subpoena, any district court of 
the United States or the United States court of any territory 
or possession, or the District Court of the United States for 
the District of Columbia, within the jurisdiction of which said 
person guilty of contumacy or refusal to obey is found or 
resides or is domiciled or transacts business, or has appointed 
an agent for receipt of service of process, upon application by 
the Attorney General of the United States shall have 
jurisdiction to issue to such person an order requiring such 
person to appear before the Director or a hearing officer, 
there to produce pertinent, relevant, and nonprivileged 
documentary evidence if so ordered, or there to give testimony 
touching the matter under investigation; and any failure to 
obey such order of the court may be punished by said court as a 
contempt thereof.]
    Sec. 8. (a) Whenever--
          (1) a court has authorized the appointment of 
        observers under Section 3(a) for a political 
        subdivision; or
          (2) the Attorney General certifies with respect to 
        any political subdivision named in, or included within 
        the scope of, determinations made under Section 4(b), 
        unless a declaratory judgment has been rendered under 
        Section 4(a), that--
                  (A) the Attorney General has received written 
                meritorious complaints from residents, elected 
                officials, or civic participation organizations 
                that efforts to deny or abridge the right to 
                vote under the color of law on account of race 
                or color, or in contravention of the guarantees 
                set forth in Section 4(f)(2) are likely to 
                occur; or
                  (B) in the Attorney General's judgment 
                (considering, among other factors, whether the 
                ratio of nonwhite persons to white persons 
                registered to vote within such subdivision 
                appears to the Attorney General to be 
                reasonably attributable to violations of the 
                14th or 15th amendment or whether substantial 
                evidence exists that bona fide efforts are 
                being made within such subdivision to comply 
                with the 14th or 15th amendment), the 
                assignment of observers is otherwise necessary 
                to enforce the guarantees of the 14th or 15th 
                amendment;

        the Director of the Office of Personnel Management 
        shall assign as many observers for such subdivision as 
        the Director may deem appropriate.
    (b) Except as provided in subSection (c), such observers 
shall be assigned, compensated, and separated without regard to 
the provisions of any statute administered by the Director of 
the Office of Personnel Management, and their service under 
this Act shall not be considered employment for the purposes of 
any statute administered by the Director of the Office of 
Personnel Management, except the provisions of Section 7324 of 
title 5, United States Code, prohibiting partisan political 
activity.
    (c) The Director of the Office of Personnel Management is 
authorized to, after consulting the head of the appropriate 
department or agency, designate suitable persons in the 
official service of the United States, with their consent, to 
serve in these positions.
    (d) Observers shall be authorized to--
          (1) enter and attend at any place for holding an 
        election in such subdivision for the purpose of 
        observing whether persons who are entitled to vote are 
        being permitted to vote; and
          (2) enter and attend at any place for tabulating the 
        votes cast at any election held in such subdivision for 
        the purpose of observing whether votes cast by persons 
        entitled to vote are being properly tabulated.
    (e) Observers shall investigate and report to the Attorney 
General, and if the appointment of observers has been 
authorized pursuant to section 3(a), to the court.

           *       *       *       *       *       *       *

    Sec. 12. (a) Whoever shall deprive or attempt to deprive 
any person of any right secured by section 2, 3, 4, 5, [7,] or 
10 or shall violate section 11(a), shall be fined not more than 
$5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
    (b) Whoever, within a year following an election in a 
political subdivision in which [an examiner has been appointed] 
an observer has been assigned (1) destroys, defaces, mutilates, 
or otherwise alters the marking of a paper ballot which has 
been cast in such election, or (2) alters any official record 
of voting in such election tabulated from a voting machine or 
otherwise, shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned 
not more than five years, or both.
    (c) Whoever conspires to violate the provisions of 
subsection (a) or (b) of this section, or interferes with any 
right secured by section 2, 3, 4, 5, [7,] 10, or 11(a) shall be 
fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five 
years, or both.

           *       *       *       *       *       *       *

    (e) Whenever in any political subdivision in which there 
are [examiners] observers appointed pursuant to this Act any 
persons alleged to such an [examiner] observer within forty-
eight hours after the closing of the polls that notwithstanding 
(1) their listing under this Act or registration by an 
appropriate election official and (2) their eligibility to 
vote, they have not been permitted to vote in such election, 
the [examiner] observer shall forthwith notify the Attorney 
General if such allegations in his opinion appear to be well 
founded. Upon receipt of such notification, the Attorney 
General may forthwith file with the district court an 
application for an order providing for the marking, casting, 
and counting of the ballots of such persons and requiring the 
inclusion of their votes in the total vote before the results 
of such election shall be deemed final and any force or effect 
given thereto. The district court shall hear and determine such 
matters immediately after the filing of such application. The 
remedy provided in this subsection shall not preclude any 
remedy available under State or Federal law.

           *       *       *       *       *       *       *

    [Sec. 13. Listing procedures shall be terminated in any 
political subdivision of any State (a) with respect to 
examiners appointed pursuant to clause (b) of section 6 
whenever the Attorney General notifies the Director of the 
Office of Personnel Management, or whenever the District Court 
for the District of Columbia determines in an action for 
declaratory judgment brought by any political subdivision with 
respect to which the Director of the Census has determined that 
more than 50 per centum of the nonwhite persons of voting age 
residing therein are registered to vote, (1) that all persons 
listed by an examiner for such subdivision have been placed on 
the appropriate voting registration roll, and (2) that there is 
no longer reasonable cause to believe that persons will be 
deprived of or denied the right to vote on account of race or 
color, or in contravention of the guarantees set forth in 
section 4(f)(2) in such subdivision, and (b), with respect to 
examiners appointed pursuant to section 3(a), upon order of the 
authorizing court. A political subdivision may petition the 
Attorney General for the termination of listing procedures 
under clause (a) of this section, and may petition the Attorney 
General to request the Director of the Census to take such 
survey or census as may be appropriate for the making of the 
determination provided for in this section. The District Court 
for the District of Columbia shall have jurisdiction to require 
such survey or census to be made by the Director of the Census 
and it shall require him to do so if it deems the Attorney 
General's refusal to request such survey or census to be 
arbitrary or unreasonable.]
    Sec. 13. (a) The assignment of observers shall terminate in 
any political subdivision of any State--
          (1) with respect to observers appointed pursuant to 
        section 8 or with respect to examiners certified under 
        this Act before the date of the enactment of the Fannie 
        Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting 
        Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006, 
        whenever the Attorney General notifies the Director of 
        the Office of Personnel Management, or whenever the 
        District Court for the District of Columbia determines 
        in an action for declaratory judgment brought by any 
        political subdivision described in subsection (b), that 
        there is no longer reasonable cause to believe that 
        persons will be deprived of or denied the right to vote 
        on account of race or color, or in contravention of the 
        guarantees set forth in section 4(f)(2) in such 
        subdivision; and
          (2) with respect to observers appointed pursuant to 
        section 3(a), upon order of the authorizing court.
    (b) A political subdivision referred to in subsection 
(a)(1) is one with respect to which the Director of the Census 
has determined that more than 50 per centum of the nonwhite 
persons of voting age residing therein are registered to vote.
    (c) A political subdivision may petition the Attorney 
General for a termination under subsection (a)(1).
    Sec. 14. (a) * * *
    (b) No court other than the District Court for the District 
of Columbia [or a court of appeals in any proceeding under 
section 9] shall have jurisdiction to issue any declaratory 
judgment pursuant to section 4 or 5 or any restraining order or 
temporary or permanent injunction against the execution or 
enforcement of any provision of this Act or any action of any 
Federal officer or employee pursuant hereto.

           *       *       *       *       *       *       *

    (e) In any action or proceeding to enforce the voting 
guarantees of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment, the court, 
in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than 
the United States, a reasonable attorney's fee, reasonable 
expert fees, and other reasonable litigation expenses as part 
of the costs.

           *       *       *       *       *       *       *


TITLE II--SUPPLEMENTAL PROVISIONS

           *       *       *       *       *       *       *



                    BILINGUAL ELECTION REQUIREMENTS

    Sec. 203. (a) * * *
    (b) Bilingual Voting Materials Requirement.--
          (1) Generally.--Before August 6, [2007] 2032, no 
        covered State or political subdivision shall provide 
        voting materials only in the English language.
          (2) Covered states and political subdivisions.--
                  (A) Generally.--A State or political 
                subdivision is a covered State or political 
                subdivision for the purposes of this subsection 
                if the Director of the Census determines, based 
                on [census data] the 2010 American Community 
                Survey census data and subsequent American 
                Community Survey data in 5-year increments, or 
                comparable census data, that--
                        (i) * * *

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