correct what the supreme court said was wrong with the 1965 voting rights act. now, here is where the rub comes because, in order to reauthorize the john lewis act or h.r.4, as we called it, you have to have a record developed for why you re targeting these specific states. now, before, it was only around six states. what we did the last time out was expand it to around nine to 11 states. but, you know, if you make the preclearance section of the john lewis act apply to all 50 states, there will be no need to have this record developed. and so, i have been asking the congress. the senate can just take s.1. they have introduced it, before. take s.1 and put the preclearance in it. apply it to all 50 states.
history in undermining the key preclearance section. it was a blow but it was not a death nell. and this week we saw evidence the supreme court ruling wasn t a death knell when a panel of texas judges struck down the state s voter i.d. law. today msnbc s melissa harris-perry talked to the attorney general about the impact of the 2013 ruling and other challenges facing the justice department. joining me now is melissa harris-perry. thank you for being here tonight, dr. perry. absolutely, rev. what did the attorney general say to you about the state of the voting rights act? well, you know, i d seen her i saw the attorney general yesterday at the event that was marking the 50th anniversary. you showed a little bit of what she spoke about there. and then spoke with her again today about it. and in both cases, you know, she has the optimism i think that
republicans on board. if more republicans are not coming on board and you don t feel that the bill is advancing as quickly as it needs to, does it make sense to continue to leave voter i.d. to the side? well, we ve made a conscious decision to try to fight that battle another day because every day that goes by with without them taking up the vraa is another day we have no protection for our communities. since the supreme court struck down section five and the preclearance section, 7 million latinos were who reside in those states were covered by preclearance. now there s nothing in place. unless we pass the if we were to pass a vraa, then 4.5 million of those latinos would now have some form of protection of their right to go and vote. so is it the bill i would have written and passed if democrats were in the majority? certainly not. but it s better than nothing.
14 republicans who signed on. still a number of republican who is said no. this is another opportunity for republicans in congress to stand up for what they claim they believe in. and it should be offensive to anyone there is still racial discrimination in voting rights. even chief justice roberts acknowledged that. so, it s unbelievable to me that he then took the action of taking away the most effective tool we ve ever had to prevent discrimination in voting. it s actually maybe we can back up. let s talk about and understand what is left of the voting rights act at this point after this ruling. section 4, which basically controls seconds 5, was invalidated. section 2, which allows people to initiate lawsuits, still stands. what exactly is left right now and how does it work at this moment? actually at this point what is left is we still have section 5. we still have the preclearance section. we also have section 3 which could be used to bail in. basically while we have lost se
the voting right act to name one lawsuits without subjecting the united states to this intrusive federal oversight? yeah. you re speaking of section 2 of the voting rights act which applies nationwide. so you can bring a suit, and after the elections are all other, of course, you may win it. the reason that we have section 5 and the formula that comes with it is that what a southern and some other states have tended to do is to make changes in laws shortly before elections. if they keep doing that and you have to go in after the fact, of course, you never catch up. so what the court did was to make the pre clearance section d section 4. no. the pre clearance that we all fought for section 5, which is the preclearance section where certain states have to preclooer all their laws. we thought they d have to do