I have received some private reactions to my call for compromise, some of it positive, some of it suggesting that I am emboldening opponents of the Act to stall further. Bob Bauer has posted these comments challenging the sincerity of Republican House members who have stalled VRA renewal, pointing to their support for discriminatory voter i.d. laws in Georgia.
I am certainly not intending to embolden opponents of the Act to stall the Act’s passage. I would prefer by many magnitudes that H.R. 9 be adopted in its current form rather than have no adoption at all. But, as I’ve said before, I view the legislation as in serious danger of constitutional invalidation by the Supreme Court. Adopting proactive bailout could go a long way toward satisfying those concerns. While some have said I’m being “used” by opponents of the act to help them ultimately scuttle the Act, my calculation is different. It would be very hard for the Republican leadership not to renew the Act this term, leaving it as a campaign issue in the fall. But these opponents provide the opening for a compromise that can improve the act.
Expiring provisions of the VRA should be renewed, and renewed this session of Congress. But they should be improved before they are renewed. We’ll see if the opponents are sincere in their hopes for compromise if they drop their proposal to change the trigger to 2004 and start suggesting more realistic and useful alternatives.
(By the way, though I support voter i.d. laws as part of a package of universal voter registration conducted by the government, I view both the earlier and current Georgia voter id laws as unconstitutional, a violation of section 2 of the voting rights act and a change that should not have been precleared under section 5 of the Act.)
UPDATE: Mark Posner writes:

The following is my three-step prescription for Section 5 sanity and survival:
First, I agree that there are good reasons for ramping down the current reauthorization proposal. Doing so will strengthen the case for its constitutionality, is responsive as a matter of policy to the fact that minority voters in the covered areas are in a much stronger position today than in 1982, and might peel off some of the current Republican naysayers (because they will view the legislation differently on substantive grounds and/or because the ramp-down will give them cover for changing their minds in response to political pressure).
Second, I don’t agree that the ramp-down should include any proactive bailout provision. I think that any proposal to have DOJ compile a list of jurisdictions eligible to bail out is impractical and also is not justified as a matter of policy. My practicality concern is based on the large number of “political subdivisions” that DOJ would need to survey (over 900) and the nature of the information that it would need to obtain (in particular, the Section 4(a)(1)(F) information). While having the 900 plus jurisdictions write in to DOJ with bail-out information would help, DOJ still would need to conduct 900 plus investigations to verify the letter claims. With regard to policy, I don’t think that the case has been made that these jurisdictions should have DOJ carry them through the bail-out door. That door is open, and though we all have thought of many reasons why more jurisdictions have not sought to pass through it, the bottom line is they have sat on their collective hands. With some effort and some payment of attorneys fees, I think that many, many jurisdictions could bail out under the current system.
Third, I agree that the most direct and simplest way to ramp down the reauthorization is to reduce the renewal period. As Rick suggested, a period of ten to fifteen years sounds good. Another thing that could be done (which seems to have my vote but no one else’s) would be to cut out from coverage some of the types of voting changes that now produce big submission numbers but very, very few objections (e.g., polling place and precinct changes, and special elections). But perhaps this is not politically doable because of a slippery slope concern.