THE AMENDMENTS

Amendment No. 1 by Westmorland (R-GA): Provided for a controversial “bail out” procedure from pre-clearance requirements. It requires the Department of Justice to assemble a list of all jurisdictions eligible for bailout and to notify the jurisdictions. The DOJ would have been required to consent to the entry of a declaratory judgment allowing bailout if a jurisdiction appears on the list.

Amendment No. 2 by Gohmert (R-TX): Limited the reauthorization period to 10 years instead of 25. The Washington Post had previously noted this amendment “has the most appeal,” and fueled speculation that the amendment may lead to a truce between the ultra-conservatives and rest of the Republican Party over opposition to other provisions in the act.

Amendment No. 3 by King (R-IA), Miller (R-MI), Brown-Waite (R-FL), Bachus (R-AL) and Istook (R-OK): Would have stricken sections 7 and 8 of the bill which relate to multilingual ballots and would require the use of different census data than is used currently to determine what jurisdictions would have to print multi-lingual ballots. The amendment would also sunset the provisions in 2007.  

Amendment No. 4 by Norwood (R-GA): Would have changed the formulas to determine states covered by Section 5’s pre-clearance requirements.

TOTAL HOUSE BREAKDOWN: AMENDMENTS & FINAL PASSAGE (including the percentage of vote the Texas Republican Congressional Delegation comprised in each vote).

Roll 370 (Norwood):

Of the 95 ‘yes’ Republican votes, 18 were from Texas. Texas Republicans comprised18.95% of the ‘yes’ votes by Congressional Republicans for this Amendment.

Roll 371 (Gohmert):

Of the 132 ‘yes’ votes by Republicans, 19 were from Texas. Texas Republicans comprised 14.39% of the ‘yes’ votes by Congressional Republicans for this Amendment.

Roll 372 (King, Et Al):

Of the 181 ‘yes’ votes by Republicans, 19 were from Texas. Texas Republicans comprised 10.50 % of the ‘yes’ votes by Congressional Republicans for this amendment.

Roll 373: (Westmorland):

Of the 117 total ‘yes’ Republican votes, 18 were from Texas. Texas Republicans comprised 15.38% percent of Republican ‘yes’ votes for this amendment.

ON FINAL PASSAGE (Roll 374)

Of the 33 Republican ‘No’ votes on Final Passage, six were from Texas. Texas Republicans comprised 18.18% of the entire ‘no’ vote tally by Congressional Republicans.