Bobby Lee Harris, a former city councilman in Alabaster, Ala. ("the heart of Shelby County"), says he is a classic example of why Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is still necessary.
Harris was a councilman as council elections approached in 2000. He realized that a black person would not be able to win in his district after district lines had been redrawn in 1996 to include a white bedroom suburb of Birmingham. He asked the Alabaster city attorney if the new map had ever been submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice for preclearance since all of Alabama was a jurisdiction covered by Section 5′s preclearance requirement. The attorney said no.
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