Editorials

The House leadership of both parties was for renewal of the act. The Judiciary Committee voted 33-1 to send it to the floor. The Senate leadership was also for it and was waiting for the House to act so they could pass it along to the president.

It was an election-year slam-dunk. Everyone would look good.

Then something happened.

The Republicans, the majority party, met in closed caucus and after what has been described as an “intense” discussion, House GOP leaders announced that the vote on renewal had been postponed — indefinitely.

Why? Because, as Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., explained it: “The speaker’s had a standing rule that nothing would be voted on unless there’s a majority of the majority. It was pretty clear at the meeting that the majority of the majority wasn’t there.”

What had happened was that a group of representatives from the South protested that, under the renewal, their states would still be required to have voting rule changes “pre-cleared” by the Justice Department despite the improvements made since the act was originally passed.

They were joined by other Republicans who wanted to remove from the act the provision that requires ballots to be printed in languages other than English in states and counties where there are large numbers of non-English speakers.

Whatever the merits of the arguments for changes in the act, the bottom line is that a group of Red State Republicans, representing the heartland the GOP has captured and hopes to hold, have undermined their party’s hope to attract black and Hispanic voters in the upcoming election.

In recent years, Republican regulars have gone out of their way to give these hard-core Red Staters what they wanted.

And this is the thanks they get.