There have been some great strides made in the name of achieving the sort of universal suffrage that we were all taught was the fundamental premise of American democracy. Right here in Wake County, activists recently claimed victory over paper-trail-less electronic voting machines.

However, there’s still much work to be done:

“The past and the present look a whole lot alike in the prevalence of racial discrimination in voting,” Barbara Arnwine, director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the Associated Press.

Two important sections of the Voting Rights Act will be up for renewal in August 2007. These sections help prevent disenfranchisement of minority voters and ensure that Americans whose first language is not English have access to resources that can help them through the voting process in their mother tongue.

So what? Well, many of the legislators who will vote on that renewal and who will influence the details of the act’s next manifestation are up for reelection this fall. As North Carolina can proudly boast competitive races in every single one of its thirteen U.S. Congressional Districts, that gives you just one more thing to talk about with the candidates as they swing through your neighborhood in the coming months.